Comment by swat535

This is because Christianity played a major role in Western law. While the laws and courts predates Christianity, after the fall of Romans, much of it was rediscovered through Church.

Many of the courtroom customs were partly influenced by this. For example the Robes/gowns or the emphasis on "law as an absolute", higher standard that sits above personal feelings is also inspired from Christian natural law ideas (i.e rulers and judges under a higher law) even though those ideas were built on Roman foundations.

So the kind of person who can treat the rules as more important than their own feelings isn't that surprising in that tradition. It requires a certain bit of.. religiosity.