Article published in the Gazette du Palais on July 23, 2019 after the symposium on "Emotions and justice" organized by the Paris Bar on July 4, 2019.

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In her latest column on the France Télécom trial, published in Le Monde on July 12, 2019, Pascale Robert-Diard quotes the first words spoken by the presiding judge, Cécile Louis-Loyant, at the opening of the trial, a quotation from President Pierre Drai: "To judge is to like to listen, to try to understand, and to want to decide". Then his final words at the end of the last hearing: "Throughout these 46 hearings, the court has enjoyed listening and trying to understand. To understand is to take together. Whatever the decision, this stage has been reached", declared the President, thanking all those who had contributed to the richness of the proceedings: defendants, civil parties, witnesses, prosecutors, lawyers. "The final stage, deciding, takes on a very heavy weight on this last day".

With these concluding words, before the deliberation, this judge, without ever relinquishing his neutrality, expressed with great emotional intelligence the extent to which speaking and listening, the bonds forged between those involved in a trial, and the emotions that run through them, are consubstantial with the act of judging. There's no doubt that those for whom they were intended must have felt a sense of communion with this court, whatever the judgment that will be handed down.

With the colloquium organized on July 4, 2019 on "Emotions and Justice", the Paris Bar has launched a new cycle of reflections and training for people of justice on the contribution of emotional intelligence in relations between them and in the understanding and resolution of disputes.

The idea behind this symposium was twofold.

First and foremost, lawyers, magistrates, court clerks, bailiffs and other legal personnel receive little or no training in understanding and managing their emotions in the course of their work.

This lack of training on the subject has a number of negative consequences, both on the quality of relations between them and on their psychological health in the workplace. Due to the lack of resources allocated to court operations, and to the budgetary management imposed on the public service of justice, members of the judiciary, who are already confronted with difficult human situations, work under daily stress, which has an impact on their ability to listen to and be available to others. The number of court workers suffering in the workplace has never been so high. Since the public authorities have no plans to increase the material and personnel resources of the courts, the judiciary can only rely on themselves. It is important that they reinforce their ability to control stress and emotional states.

Secondly, emotional intelligence is an essential resource for understanding the parties to a dispute and finding a solution in their best interests.

This awareness initially developed in the field of amicable dispute resolution. In negotiation, mediation, collaborative law and even participatory procedure, the players in these processes, deprived of recourse to the jurisdictional power of the judge, needed to develop listening and communication tools based on greater emotional intelligence in order to reach a common decision.

A priori, the use of emotional intelligence seems less important in judicial or arbitral dispute resolution. Emotion is even perceived negatively, with the idea that it is detrimental to objective, impartial decision-making. As far as the judge or arbitrator is concerned (except when the latter rules on an amicable basis, according to equity), emotion must be stifled or kept at bay. The dispute will be decided according to the rules of law and pure reason.

However, this vision of things is an ideal that is difficult to reconcile with the reality of the trial. Judges are also affected by emotions, both their own and those of others, and it is in their interest to be able to identify them, and to know their causes and effects on their judgment. What's more, this purely rationalist approach is not as beneficial as one might think for obtaining good judgments. Emotional intelligence, along with law and reason, is an additional resource for achieving the art of being fair.

Moreover, the foreseeable development of artificial intelligence ensures that algorithms will not just be used to operate robots to perform material tasks. Some even envisage using them to replace judges. Algorithmic justice can reproduce rational thought patterns in the act of judging. But not yet our emotional intelligence. If we want to maintain a "human" form of justice, we need judges to develop their emotional intelligence while using the tools of artificial intelligence.

At the July 4 symposium, the scientific understanding of emotions, their birth, contagion and control was presented by Dr Nicole El Massioui, co-leader of the "Cognition & Emotions" research team at the Paris Saclay neuroscience institute, Christophe Haag, professor at emlyon, researcher in social psychology, author of La contagion émotionnelle (Albin Michel, 2019) and Veronica Brown, sophrologist, author of Devenir Sophrologue (Eyrolles , 2018). Many of our daily decisions are made by our emotional intelligence, our cognitive and emotional biases. Emotions are linked to our bodily senses, our biology and our brain. Rational intelligence relies solely on our neural connections. It can dominate our emotional intelligence, and happily so, but only after some effort. In short, in the words of Pascal, the spirit of finesse is just as important as the spirit of geometry in our decision-making. As we are all interconnected, we contaminate others with our emotions, and vice versa. To be unaware of the causes and effects of this emotional contagion is to accept being like a piece of wood floating in the river's currents. Fortunately, reason and mind-body techniques such as sophrology enable us to understand the origins of our emotions and control them.

On theoretical research between law and emotions, Professor Emmanuel Jeuland of Paris-1 University, author of Théorie relationniste du droit (LGDJ, 2016), outlined the richness for the judge of taking emotion into account, as much as reason, within the framework of legal relationships and the symbolic framework of procedural rules and judicial ritual. Marie-Christine Sordino, professor at the University of Montpellier, presented the upheaval brought about by neuroscience in the consideration of criminal responsibility. Finally, sociologist Liora Israël described international research on the subject and her work as part of the "Law and Emotions" seminar she runs at EHESS.

The Paris Bar Association had invited members of the judiciary, court registrars and the bar, as well as journalists and legal columnists, to take part in the event. Frédéric Chevallier, public prosecutor in Blois, Dominique Coujard, former assize court president, and Martine de Maximy, former juvenile court judge and psychologist-psychotherapist, spoke about their experiences and points of view. These points of view sometimes contrasted, notably between that of Dominique Coujard, for whom the magistrate certainly has his own sensitivity, but which must be set aside in order to put emotion at a distance in order to maintain the necessary objectivity, and that of Martine de Maximy, for whom the magistrate can only achieve impartiality by accepting his emotions in order to understand them and not be unconscious of his cognitive or emotional biases. The court clerk's office was represented by Sandra Charlier, court clerk at the Pontoise juvenile court, who explained the essential role played by court clerks in dealing with litigants and the difficulties they encounter when faced with sometimes painful human situations in which they are obliged to remain silent.

Journalists Olivia Dufour, author of Justice, une faillite française? (LGDJ, 2018) and Justice et médias : la tentation du populisme (LGDJ, 2019), and Florence Sturm, Justice specialist at France Culture, co-author of Chroniques d'un procès du terrorisme. L'affaire Merah (La Martinière, 2019), presented their practices in managing emotions in the trials they follow, and the role of the media in containing or propagating emotions.

Last but not least, a large number of lawyers took part, detailing their experiences of dealing with their emotions in trials: Edmond-Claude Fréty, also president of Cerveau et Droit, Fabrice Epstein, author of Un génocide pour l'exemple (Les éditions du cerf, 2019), Élise Arfi, author of Pirate n° 7 (Anne Carrière, 2018), Grégory Saint-Michel, Gustave Charvet, François Martineau, author of Petit traité de l'argumentation judiciaire et de plaidoirie (Dalloz, 2017) Carole Foissy, Vincent Nioré, author of Perquisitions chez l'avocat. Défense des secrets et inviolabilité de l'asile sacré (Lamy, 2014) and Clarisse Serre.

If there's a single thought on the relationship between the lawyer and emotional intelligence, it's the link between speech and emotion in the trial.

It would be unthinkable to sum up all the richness of what they had to say in just a few lines. If there is a single thought on the relationship between the lawyer and emotional intelligence, it is the link between words and emotion in the trial. Everyone agreed that emotion comes first through words. The right words, the excessive words, the inappropriate words, the incomprehensible words, the words that are not said but that we would like to say or hear. It's up to the lawyer to find the right words to explain his client's situation, defend his interests and convince the judge. It's also up to him to gather his client's words, to translate his thoughts or feelings that sometimes he can't even express in words. Like the Somali pirate "n° 7", whose story was told by Élise Arfi, who was given this name by the magistrates during the trial because his name was too difficult to pronounce. Following the screening of Mika Gianotti's film À cœur d'avocats, which depicts the humane relationships that lawyers try to forge with their clients, Élise Arfi, Gustave Charvet and Grégory Saint-Michel recounted how they had been shaken throughout the 4 years of proceedings against their Somali clients, and how in the face of so much misery and suffering, their only recourse had been their emotional intelligence, the spoken word and the law to wrest just decisions from the legal machine. Fabrice Epstein recounted his emotional struggle, linked to his family history, when he defended a man accused of genocide. Clarisse Serre sincerely described her method of defense, refusing to exploit emotions in court. And Vincent Nioré, in his role as the bâtonnier's delegate to contest searches of lawyers' premises, explained the emotional shock and its contagion caused by a search, how he had to come to the aid of the spouse of a lawyer who had suffered an epileptic seizure, and of a young lawyer who had suffered a crying fit during a hearing of the juge des libertés et de la détention, traumas provoked by the shocking words of magistrates, and how he must resolutely defend professional secrecy and the rights of the defense.

The author of these lines would like to thank all the participants and speakers at this symposium, which will shortly be followed by another to explore the subject of emotions and justice - in short, the art of being fair with emotions, law and reason.

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