'This book constitutes a major work in the study of legal anthropology and, at the same time, a key contribution to current debates in the interrelated fields of affective politics and the anthropological study of emotions … Bens offers an original and innovative approach that reverses common assumptions, and it reforms and transforms our possibilities of thinking about law and legal processes differently, in a promising and productive manner – as emotionally charged, affectively framed, and contested. This is a thoroughly worked, wide-ranging, and impressive piece of scholarship that weaves together ethnography, legal theory, and a condensed re-reading of the history of legal anthropology, while navigating with deep knowledge and brilliant lucidity the current and recent debates in related fields.' Kai Kresse, S-Professor and Vice Director of the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Freie Universität Berlin