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Full-Text Articles in Judges

Does Unconscious Racial Bias Affect Trial Judges?, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Sheri Lynn Johnson, Andrew J. Wistrich Jan 2009

Does Unconscious Racial Bias Affect Trial Judges?, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Sheri Lynn Johnson, Andrew J. Wistrich

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Race matters in the criminal justice system. Black defendants appear to fare worse than similarly situated white defendants. Why? Implicit bias is one possibility. Researchers, using a well-known measure called the implicit association test, have found that most white Americans harbor implicit bias toward Black Americans. Do judges, who are professionally committed to egalitarian norms, hold these same implicit biases? And if so, do these biases account for racially disparate outcomes in the criminal justice system? We explored these two research questions in a multi-part study involving a large sample of trial judges drawn from around the country. Our results …


Book Review: Unlikely Heroes By Jack Bass, David B. Filvaroff Oct 1982

Book Review: Unlikely Heroes By Jack Bass, David B. Filvaroff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Unlikely Heroes is designed for both the lawyer and the general reader. It does not purport to offer careful legal analysis of constitutional doctrine or to measure the Fifth Circuit's actions during this era against any articulated concept of the proper role of the judiciary in a federal system. To the extent that Bass raises any questions about the propriety of the judges' conduct or decisions, he appears to conclude that they were fully justified by the nature of the issues presented and by the demands of the times.Whatever its intended audience, however, the book would have benefited from a …