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84 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1195 (2008-2009)
Does Unconscious Racial Bias Affect Trial Judges

handle is hein.journals/tndl84 and id is 1201 raw text is: DOES UNCONSCIOUS RACIAL BIAS AFFECT TRIAL JUDGES? Jeffreyj Rachlinski,* Sheri Lynn Johnsont AndrewJ Wistrich,4 & Chris Guthriet Race matters in the criminal justice system. Black defendants appear to fare worse than similarly situated white defendants. Why? Implicit bias is one possibility. Researchers, using a well-known measure called the Implicit Associ- ation Test, have found that most white Americans harbor implicit bias toward black Americans. Do judges, who are professionally committed to egalitarian norms, hold these same implicit biases? And if so, do these biases account for racially disparate outcomes in the criminal justice system? We explored these two research questions in a multi-part study involving a large sample of trial judges drawn from around the country. Our results-which are both discour- aging and encouraging-raise profound issues for courts and society. We find that judges harbor the same kinds of implicit biases as others; that these biases can influence their judgment; but that given sufficient motivation, judges can compensate for the influence of these biases. © 2009 Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Sheri Lynn Johnson, AndrewJ. Wistrich, and Chris Guthrie. Individuals and nonprofit institutions may reproduce and distribute copies of this Article in any format, at or below cost, for educational purposes, so long as each copy identifies the author, provides a citation to the Notre Dame Law Review, and includes this provision and copyright notice. * Professor of Law, Cornell Law School. t Professor of Law, Cornell Law School. I Magistrate Judge, United States District Court, Central District of California. tt Professor of Law, Vanderbilt Law School. The authors are grateful for the comments and assistance of Ian Ayres, Steve Burbank, Jack Glaser, Tracey George, Tony Greenwald, Matthew Patrick Henry, Reid Hastie, Christine Jolls, Dan Kahan, Jerry Kang, Cass Sunstein, and the participants in workshops at the University of Arizona Law School, Bar Ilan University Law School, Brooklyn Law School, the University of Chicago Law School, Chicago-Kent Law School, Cornell Law School, George Washington University Law School, Harvard Law School, Hebrew University Law School, the University of Illinois School of Law, Notre Dame Law School, Ohio State University Law School, St. Louis University Law School, Syracuse University Law School, Tel-Aviv University Law School, Temple Law School, Villanova Law School, the University of Zurich, the Annual Meeting of the American Law and Economics Association, and the Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies.

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