More than 200 years after his death, William Blackstone is having a moment in the academic world. The recently published Oxford editions of the Commentaries on the Laws of England have inspired a renewed interest in Blackstone's works. This revival has stretched beyond analysis of Blackstone's rationalization of the English common law, to questions regarding his contribution to architecture, criticism of his take on gender, and acknowledgment of his influence in far-flung places such as America and Germany.

A reader not greatly acquainted with the man might think such interdisciplinary fascination with Blackstone a little ironic. Blackstone is often characterized as a fairly reserved legal thinker. But William Blackstone had a creative side; he was a poet. Kathryn Temple's Loving Justice: Legal Emotions in Blackstone's England is an elegantly written reminder that Blackstone the poet and Blackstone the legal-treatise writer were, in fact, the same person. Although the Commentaries are the main text under study, Temple also scrutinizes Blackstone's general use of language, from his poetry to his prose to his dying words. Most notably, she argues that Blackstone's poem “The Lawyer's Farewel to His Muse,” and the emotions present within, foreshadowed his later legal writing. Temple shows that although the Commentaries does not spill over with poetic prose, affective, emotive language is present and is used in clever and interesting ways.

Using a methodology that draws from literary studies, the history of emotions, and legal history, Temple conducts a close reading of the many metaphors and symbols in the Commentaries to interpret the emotional underpinnings of the eighteenth-century justice system. Temple offers sustained analysis of what she terms “legal emotions,” meaning both emotions within the law and those regulated by law. One of Temple's central arguments is that Blackstone sought to find “harmonic justice” within the English common law, and used an emotive narrative to demonstrate the harmonious coexistence of law, justice, culture, and history. It is argued that Blackstone's simplification and rationalization of the law deliberately emblazoned the Commentaries with an inner harmony. For Temple, harmony reflects balance, a feature visible in the structure of the Commentaries (four evenly sized volumes) and the titles used (two volumes cover “Rights,” two cover “Wrongs”). Loving Justice pays homage to this harmonic structure. Chapters One and Two consider emotion embedded within the Commentaries, Chapter Three acts as a transitional text that examines Blackstone himself, and Chapters Four and Five cover the subsequent influence of the emotional side of the Commentaries.

The first chapter tackles the emotions of desire and disgust as representing the tension between certainty and uncertainty in the English justice system. The oft-made comparison between law in theory and law in practice is explored through the emotions present in Blackstone's writings on marriage law and his championing of the English adversarial trial. This is followed by a chapter that ties the presence of mourning and melancholia found in Blackstone's poetry to the Commentaries. Melancholy is present in the description of the history of property law (the place most present-day law students might expect to find it!) This “melancholic understanding of the past” invokes feelings of loss and alerts the reader to law's artificiality (88).

Chapter Three steps away from the Commentaries to examine the shame and embarrassment that Blackstone experienced as a public speaker. Blackstone's strength in writing and weaknesses in performance came at a time when law in books was increasingly valued more highly than the oral, spoken tradition. The popularity of the Commentaries was bolstered by this shift.

Chapter Four returns to the idea of harmonic justice, tracking the difficulties that Blackstone experienced in sandwiching peine forte et dure into his account of the rational, “tender” English laws. Temple unearths the disharmony “between pre-Enlightenment practices of torture and the Enlightenment reaction to them” (114). She argues that Blackstone's shrouding of English torture resembles present-day American discussions of torture at Guantanamo Bay. The final chapter tackles the emotion of happiness, which Temple argues that Blackstone saw in harmonic justice. “Happiness” has a convoluted history, and Temple makes some efforts to uncover different historical meanings of the word, drawing on the works of Sara Ahmed and John Rawls in the process. Blackstone himself merged eighteenth-century and classical conceptions of happiness; his definition encompassed politics, emotions, and justice.

A reader more interested in Blackstone's contribution to the shape of legal doctrine may not be beguiled by Temple's intricate breakdown of particular emotions language or affective phrases, but those with an interest in Blackstone the individual, or those who seek a master class in combining literary analysis with legal history, will find Temple's methodology and findings thought provoking. Some of the dense language analysis is heavy going for those not versed in literature scholarship, and those less familiar with Blackstone might wish to read Loving Justice with a copy of The Commentaries by their side. However, the book is a compelling and harmonious construction in itself.