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Full-Text Articles in Law
Understanding The Person Beneath The Robe: Practical Methods For Neutralizing Harmful Judicial Biases, Evan R. Seamone
Understanding The Person Beneath The Robe: Practical Methods For Neutralizing Harmful Judicial Biases, Evan R. Seamone
Journal Articles
This article presents hands-on self-awareness techniques for use by judges, arbitrators, members of commissions, and other legal decision-makers who are confronted with complex cases. All too often, these judges are expected to make the “right” decisions without knowing how to accomplish this task. While judges, no doubt, are capable of applying the law to a case, this is only one aspect of righteous behavior. This article is concerned with the related expectation that judges are capable of rendering fair and impartial decisions. No matter how much training they receive, judges can only avoid biases that are known to them.
Judicial Mindfulness, Evan R. Seamone
Judicial Mindfulness, Evan R. Seamone
Journal Articles
Like all human beings, judges are influenced by personal routines and behaviors that have become second nature to them or have somehow dropped below the radar of their conscious control. Professor Ellen Langer and others have labeled this general state "mindlessness." They have distinguished "mindful" thinking as a process that all people can employ to gain awareness of subconscious influences, and thus increase the validity of their decisions. In this Article, I establish a theory of "judicial mindfulness" that would guard against two types of "cold" bias when interpreting legal materials. The first harmful bias involves traumatic past events that …