The present work examined the detection of racial bias through thin slices of nonverbal behavior. Thirty Black and 30 White American judges rated the nonverbal behavior displayed by White individuals from 20-seconds of silent videotape of an interaction with either a Black or a White confederate. Correlations between judges’ nonverbal ratings and targets’ scores on a response latency measure of...

In the 1970s and 80s the feminist and battered womenÕs movement transformed public perception of domestic violence from a private family matter to a crime punishable by legal sanctions. Consequently, many states passed laws criminalizing domestic violence. In turn, domestic violence cases filled criminal court dockets around the country. Suddenly, judges played a major role in implementing and ...

This article considers the justification for using panels of judges to make decisions in common law systems. The usual argument is that panels are more likely than lone judges to make correct judgments. This article suggests an additional justification: panels increase the predictability of law, so that potential litigants can anticipate correctly which legal rules will apply in their cases. Th...

I analyze how careerist judges formulate their decisions using information they uncover during deliberations as well as relevant information from previous decisions. I assume that judges have reputation concerns and try to signal to an evaluator that they can interpret the law correctly. If an appeal is brought, the appellate court’s decision reveals whether the judge interpreted the law proper...

During the past two decades, the use of DNA tests has revolutionized court proceedings in criminal and paternity cases. On the horizon is a new challenge for judges--whether to admit or compel genetic tests to confirm or predict genetic diseases and conditions in many more judicial contexts, e.g., decisions regarding culpability, sentencing, liability, causation, and damages. This Policy Forum ...

A common finding in confidence research is the hard-easy effect, in which judges exhibit greater overconfidence for more difficult sets of questions. Many explanations have been advanced for the hard-easy effect, including systematic cognitive mechanisms, experimenter bias, random error, and statistical artifact. In this article, I mathematically derive necessary and sufficient conditions for o...

We investigate the performance of non-expert judges in using leading computational poetry evaluation metrics to evaluate poetry written by humans. We find that regardless of the model used, non-expert judges are very poor at using metrics to evaluate creativity, even displaying the reverse of the desired rating pattern, preferring novice poetry to professional poetry. We discuss likely reasons ...

The relationship between judicial elections and judicial independence is receiving considerable scrutiny today. This article examines the impact of elections on judicial independence from the perspective of voters, since it is voters’ choices that ultimately determine the electoral fates of incumbent judges. The research on voting in judicial elections helps in understanding the circumstances t...