Via Legal Scholarship Blog, downloadable papers from today’s workshops:
Chicago Law & Politics, Jeff Rachlinski (Cornell Law), Does Unconscious Bias Affect Trial Judges?. Here is a taste:
The continued presence of implicit biases among judges should at least sound a cautionary note for all judges. In fact, we found that these associations have the potential to influence judgment, particular in judges who are busy or unwary. But the news here is not all grim. Judges in our study mostly managed to avoid the influence of bias when we explicitly identified the race or gender of the legal actors. We assume that the judges were motivated to avoid the appearance of bias and managed to do so in these cases. We conclude that judges should use these same skills in the courtroom. The influence of unconscious bias can be avoided with three simple steps. First, judges must be motivated to avoid bias. Second, judges must aware of the potential for unconscious bias to affect their judgment. And finally, and they should be sure that they take enough time with their decision making that they suppress quick judgments that are apt to be subject to the influence of unconscious bias.
Georgetown, Lawrence Mitchell (George Washington Law), The Speculation Economy: How Finance Triumphed Over Industry.