Law Commons^™

Ranking Judges According To Citation Bias, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi

Faculty Scholarship

In our Essay, we put forward a methodology to assess the amount of political bias that affects judges based on the decisions judges make on whom to cite in their opinions. Unlike prior studies looking at judicial bias that focus on judicial voting outcomes, our study of bias in citation practices is aimed at uncovering more subtle forms of bias. Judges may shy away from acting overly biased when making a highly visible decision such as voting in a particular case, but instead seek to shift the law more subtly through their reasoning and citation patterns in the opinion, thereby …