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Discrimination As Accident, Amy L. Wax

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This Article seeks to examine how the law should respond to unconscious or automatic forms of cognitive bias that are thought to produce less favorable treatment of employees in the workplace because of race or sex ("unconscious disparate treatment"). Assuming that inadvertent bias is a form of workplace "accident," and using familiar principles of accident law and economic analysis, the Article concludes that extending the framework created by existing anti-discrimination laws to cover disparate treatment that stems from unconscious group-based biases is not a good idea because it is unlikely to serve the principal goals of a liability scheme (deterrence, …