Judges Commons^™

When Judges Have Reasons Not To Give Reasons - A Comparative Law Approach, Mathilde Cohen

Faculty Articles and Papers

Influential theories of law have celebrated judicial reasongiving as furthering a host of democratic values, including judges' accountability, citizens'participation in adjudication, and a more accurate and transparent decision-making process. This Article has two main purposes. First, it argues that although reasongiving is important, it is often in tension with other values of the judicial process, such as guidance, sincerity, and efficiency. Reason-giving must, therefore, be balanced against these competing values. In other words, judges sometimes have reasons not to give reasons. Second, contrary to common intuition, common law and civil law systems deal with this tension between reasons for and …