The psychology of judicial decision making

Author(s)

    • Klein, David E.
    • Mitchell, Gregory

Bibliographic Information

The psychology of judicial decision making

edited by David Klein, Gregory Mitchell

（American Psychology-Law Society series）

Oxford University Press, 2010

  • : hbk

Available at  / 4 libraries

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. 297-334) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Over the years, psychologists have devoted uncountable hours to learning how human beings make judgments and decisions. As much progress as scholars have made in explaining what judges do over the past few decades, there remains a certain lack of depth to our understanding. Even where scholars can make consensual and successful predictions of a judge's behavior, they will often disagree sharply about exactly what happens in the judge's mind to generate the predicted result. This volume of essays examines the psychological processes that underlie judicial decision making. The first section of the book takes as its starting point the fact that judges make many of the same judgments and decisions that ordinary people make and considers how our knowledge about judgment and decision-making in general applies to the case of legal judges. In the second section, chapters focus on the specific tasks that judges perform within a unique social setting and examine the expertise and particular modes of reasoning that judges develop to deal with their tasks in this unique setting. Finally, the third section raises questions about whether and how we can evaluate judicial performance, with implications for the possibility of improving judging through the selection and training of judges and structuring of judicial institutions. Together the essays apply a wide range of psychological insights to help us better understand how judges make decisions and to open new avenues of inquiry into the influences on judicial behavior.

Table of Contents

Introduction David Klein Part I: Judges and Human Behavior Motivation and Judicial Behavior: Expanding the Scope of Inquiry Lawrence Baum Multiple Constraint Satisfaction in Judging Jennifer K. Robbennolt, Robert J. MacCoun, and John M. Darley Top-Down and Bottom-Up Models of Judicial Reasoning Brandon L. Bartels Persuasion in the Decision Making of U.S. Supreme Court Justices Lawrence S. Wrightsman Judges as Members of Small Groups Wendy L. Martinek The Supreme Court, Social Psychology, and Group Formation Neal Devins and Will Federspiel Part II: Judging as Specialized Activity Is There a Psychology of Judging? Frederick Schauer Features of Judicial Reasoning Emily Sherwin In Praise of Pedantic Eclecticism: Pitfalls and Opportunities in the Psychology of Judging Dan Simon Judges, Expertise, and Analogy Barbara A. Spellman Thresholds For Action in Judicial Decisions Len Dalgleish, James Shanteau and April Park Every Jury Trial Is a Bench Trial: Judicial Engineering of Jury Disputes C. K. Rowland, Tina Traficanti, and Erin Vernon Searching for Constraint in Legal Decision Making Eileen Braman Part III: Evaluating and Improving Judging Evaluating Judges Gregory Mitchell Defining Good Judging Andrew J. Wistrich Expertise of Court Judges James Shanteau and Len Dalgleish Cognitive Style and Judging Gregory Mitchell and Philip E. Tetlock Building a Better Judiciary Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry References

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