Overview
Interactional Justice explores how defence lawyers accomplish their role in interaction with others and highlights the ways in which they do loyalty work – constructing and conveying loyalty in emotionally and interactionally constraining situations. By drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldnotes and interviews with lawyers, this sociological study brings their loyalty work to life and reveals to the reader the unwritten rules of emotional interactions. It presents how defence lawyers socially construct their duty of loyalty by negotiating informal and implicit professional and social expectations. This accomplishment demands emotion work and face work in order to perform a role which includes defending clients accused of heinous crimes and “losing” the majority of cases. As the defence team is central to this, the ways of doing teamwork are illustrated. Teamwork is also found to be essential between legal professionals to ensure that a criminal trial runs smoothly. All of this takes place within an overarching framework – the emotional regime of law – which aims to uphold the illusionary dichotomy between rationality and emotionality thus quietening the role of emotions. Loyalty and teamwork are features of many professions, workplaces, and aspects of social life making this book an essential tool for understanding strategies for their accomplishment. Focusing on courtroom emotions and interactions, the book suggests how trials can be made more user-friendly and provides guidance for newly qualified legal professionals. The use of ethnographic fieldnotes and interviews provides scholars and students in the social sciences, teaching, law, and medicine with a colourful monograph which reveals and explains emotion and interaction rules. It also makes this book a useful tool for teaching and understanding qualitative research methods.
Full Product Details
Author: Lisa Flower (Lund University, Sweden)
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint: Routledge
Weight: 0.453kg
ISBN: 9780367647216
ISBN 10: 0367647214
Pages: 210
Publication Date: 06 August 2020
Audience:
College/higher education
,
General/trade
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
,
General
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
It is a significant contribution to the sociological, criminological and broader bodies of literature. It offers something original, something rigorous and something intimate. Clare Gunby, The British Journal of Criminology, 2021; https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azab051
It is a significant contribution to the sociological, criminological and broader bodies of literature. It offers something original, something rigorous and something intimate. Clare Gunby, The British Journal of Criminology, 2021; https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azab051 In short, Interactional Justice represents a major contribution not only to symbolic interactionism, but also the sociology of emotions, the ethnographic method, criminology, and the psychological study of the court system. It is highly recommended for anyone with interests in these areas. Leonard A. Steverson, Symbolic Interaction, 2021; https://doi.org/10.1002/symb.554
Author Information
Lisa Flower is a researcher and senior lecturer in sociology and criminology at Lund University, Sweden. Her research interests include the hidden emotion and interaction rules in courtrooms and the legal profession.
