The Web's Faceless Judges

Antibiotic resistance – The faceless threat

A potential post-antibiotic era is threatening present and future medical advances. The current worldwide increase in resistant bacteria and, simultaneously, the downward trend in the development of new antibiotics have serious implications. Resistant bacteria dramatically reduce the possibilities of treating infectious diseases effectively and multiply the risks of complications and a fatal ou...

Judging the judges: Evaluating the performance of international gymnastics judges

Judging a gymnastics routine is a noisy process, and the performance of judges varies widely. The International Federation of Gymnastics (FIG), in collaboration with Longines and the Université de Neuchâtel, is designing and implementing an improved statistical engine to analyze the performance of gymnastics judges during and after major competitions like the Olympic Games and the World Champio...

The Debate over the Selection and Retention of Judges: How Judges Can Ride the Wave

Evaluating Judges

Much of the interest in empirical studies of judges lies in the comparison of actual to ideal behavior. When we ask what makes a good judge or whether a judge rightly decided a case, we implicitly compare the judge's decisions to a normative standard. In some instances, the content of the normative standard is uncontroversial and its application straightforward. Hence, a trial judge who sentenc...

Judges, "testilying," and the Constitution

Because law enforcement officers must justify searches and seizures in response to motions to suppress evidence,! judges ruling upon these motions often must evaluate the credibility of the officers' testimony. This inquiry can involve one or more of three interrelated questions: Did the facts known to the officer justify the intrusion? Was the officer's purpose in conducting the search and sei...