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Proposed Amendments To The Federal Judicial Misconduct Rules: Comments And Suggestions, Arthur D. Hellman Oct 2014

Proposed Amendments To The Federal Judicial Misconduct Rules: Comments And Suggestions, Arthur D. Hellman

Testimony

In 2008, the Judicial Conference of the United States – the administrative policy-making body of the federal judiciary – approved a revised set of rules for handling complaints of misconduct or disability on the part of federal judges. Moving away from the decentralizing approach of the pre-2008 Illustrative Rules, the new rules were made binding on all of the federal judicial circuits.

On September 2, 2014, the Conference’s Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability (Conduct Committee) issued a set of draft amendments to the Rules. The announcement invited comments on the proposed amendments. This statement was submitted in response to …


The Lock-In Effect Of Preliminary Injunctions, Kevin J. Lynch Jan 2014

The Lock-In Effect Of Preliminary Injunctions, Kevin J. Lynch

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Judges suffer from the same cognitive biases that afflict the rest of us. Judges use shortcuts to help them deal with the uncertainty and time pressure inherent in the judicial process. Judges should be aware of the conditions when those shortcuts lead to systemic biases in decision-making, and adjust legal standards in order to reduce or avoid such bias altogether.

One important bias that has been identified by economists and psychologists is the lock-in effect. The lock-in effect causes a decision-maker who must revisit an earlier decision to be locked-in to the earlier decision. The effect is particularly pronounced where …