In this talk, Stina Bergman Blix will present her ongoing book project on epistemic emotions, i.e. emotions involved in knowledge acquisition, such as interest, doubt and certainty. She will present the overarching project and then focus in particular on the epistemic process of reaching certainty in legal decision-making.

Reaching certainty in legal decision-making

The process of reaching certainty in court is guided by elaborate rules, the overarching one being that it is not allowed to settle in feeling certain before all evidence is presented. At the same time, understanding and interpreting the facts of a case, making them meaningful, includes taking a preliminary stance or trying out their relevance, in effect feeling certain.

In this chapter, Bergman Blix and her collaborators explore certainty both as a process of making up one’s mind, landing in a decision, and the truth or knowledge that certainty leans on, its foundation. Building on extensive ethnographic fieldwork from Sweden, Italy and the USA, including shadowing and interviews with prosecutors and judges as well as observations during court proceedings and deliberations, they find that legal professionals can feel certain very early in the process, but they often try to work with their certainty for it not to settle ahead of time.

This agile certainty is highly valued among legal professionals, an asset that goes hand in hand with a readiness to form decisions, reaching deliberate certainty. Deliberate certainty is a valid endpoint to make decisions, but the judicial and social complexity of legal decisions can result in a temporal gap between deliberate certainty and the accompanied feelings of confidence and ease of settled certainty, when imminent uncertainties and moral consequences have subsided.

Comparing epistemic emotions across legal cultures

By comparing the process through agile, deliberate and settled certainty in three countries, Bergman Blix and her collaborators find similarities and differences in how epistemic emotions are conceived and managed depending on emotional culture and legal tradition.

About the speaker

Stina Bergman Blix is Professor of Sociology at Lund University. Her research focuses on meaning-making, social interaction and the sociology of emotions, with particular attention to how emotions shape professional practices and decision-making.

Her current work explores the relationship between emotions and principles such as objectivity, impartiality and rationality, including the role of epistemic emotions such as interest, doubt and certainty in legal decision-making.