Compassion and the rule of law
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12889671 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Susan Bandes (DePaul University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 184-196 |
| Publication date | 2017-05-12 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Journal of Law in Context (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1744-5523 • E-ISSN: 1744-5531 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s1744552317000118 |
| OpenAlex | W2562590442 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
| References cited | 10 |
Compassion poses difficult challenges for the rule of law. The compassionate response is often cast as a deviation from settled law rather than a principled application of it. Compassion so understood is troubling, most obviously because it poses a challenge to overall fairness, notice and consistency. Although compassion is usually approached as a factor influencing substantive outcomes, I argue to the contrary that compassion cannot serve as a reliable indicator of who should prevail in legal debates. Whether compassion should inform substance is a normative question that must be answered in light of the purposes of the tribunal and the principles it seeks to advance. I propose instead that compassion's importance lies in its ability to aid decision-makers in understanding what is at stake for the litigant. In this sense, compassion is closely tied to humility: both are reminders of human fallibility and of the limits of individual understanding
Compassion · Context (archaeology · Law and economics · Political science · Sociology · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Legal Education and Practice Innovations · Psychology
Family Violence and Judicial Empathy
Law and compassion
From dispassionate law to compassionate outcomes in health-care law, or not
Drizzling sympathy
Extinction, law and thinking emotionally about invertebrates
From the limits of sympathy to a feminist reconceptualization of justice in marital property division
Compassion & planning
Amor, género e justiça
| Citations per year | 0.89 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2017 - 2026 (10) |
| Highly cited | No |