Reducing Sympathy Bias: The Impact of Statutory Interpretation Methods

Six studies investigate whether the effect of racist biases on judges' legal decisions on minority defendants is reduced by a “justice focus.” Given that people associate legal decision-making with the need to do so in a colorblind manner, a justice focus blocks the effect of racist biases on legal decisions. Experiment 1 shows that explicit instructions to adopt a justice goal decrease biases. Experiment 2 shows that a primed justice focus also decreases biases. Experiments 3a and 3b show the role of pre-existing legal expertise, which makes people more susceptible a justice goal. Experiments 4a and 4b apply these findings by studying the role of a justice focus among professional courtroom judges. Together, these results demonstrate the importance of a justice focus in preventing racist biases in legal decision-making. Importantly, a justice focus is a necessary but no sufficient condition for the colorblind administration of justice. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

What difference do starting points make? The question is important for decision-making in general and for law in particular, including the interpretation of statutes. Judges must begin the interpretive process somewhere. Today, Supreme Court opinions sometimes promote the idea of starting with the text of the statute at issue. But what does this mean, in practice, and does it matter to decisions? "Start with the text" could be a signal of allegiance to an interpretive school and an indication that some interpretive tools are more important than or even lexically superior to others. At present, however, the statement delivers neither of those messages well. Instead, we might think about the statement as a rule for sequencing sources. Although the mere sequence in which information is considered does not have any clear logical significance for case results, the idea of starting with statutory text can become almost unnervingly significant—and without adding lexical priority.

When deliberating, jurors may introduce misinformation that may influence other jurors’ memory and decision-making. In two studies, we explored the impact of misinformation exposure during jury deliberation. Participants in both studies read a transcript of an alleged sexual assault. In Study 1 (N = 275), participants encountered either consistent pro-prosecution misinformation, consistent pro-defense misinformation, or contradictory misinformation (pro-prosecution and pro-defense). In Study 2 (N = 339), prior to encountering either pro-prosecution or pro-defense misinformation while reading a jury deliberation transcript, participants either received or did not receive a judicial instruction about misinformation exposure during deliberation. Participants in both studies completed legal decision-making variables (e.g., defendant guilt rating) before and after deliberation, and their memory was assessed for misinformation acceptance via recall and source memory tasks. In Study 1, misinformation type did not influence legal decision-making, but pro-prosecution misinformation was more likely to be misattributed as trial evidence than pro-defense or contradictory misinformation. In Study 2, pro-defense misinformation was more likely to be misattributed to the trial than pro-prosecution misinformation, and rape myths moderated this. Furthermore, exposure to pro-defense misinformation skewed legal decision-making towards the defense’s case. However, the judicial instruction about misinformation exposure did not influence memory or decision-making. Together, these findings suggest that misinformation in jury deliberations may distort memory for trial evidence and bias decision-making, highlighting the need to develop effective safeguards for reducing the impact of misinformation in trial contexts.

Although the influence of gender ideology on lay decision-making has been established, it is not known to what extent expertise may mitigate gendered biases and improve decision-making quality. In a set of controlled experiments, trial court judges and laypeople evaluated a hypothetical child custody case and a hypothetical employment discrimination case. The role of expertise was tested in two ways: by comparing judges’ and laypeople’s decision-making and by examining relative differences in expertise among judges. Judges were no less influenced by litigant gender and by their own gender ideology than the lay sample. Judges with greater subject-matter expertise were also no less influenced by gender ideology than other judges. In some cases, expertise was associated with greater, not less, bias. The results of this study suggest that expertise does not attenuate gendered biases in legal decision-making.

The purpose of the paper is to indicate in which way modern digital information systems influence the range of legal sources and to assess whether such changes improve the quality of judgements and other legal decisions. The paper uses examples from Danish law but does not in any detail describe specific information systems. It takes a more general approach. At the beginning the concept of a legal source is briefly discussed and it is considered why these sources are used. Preconditions for their usage are mainly availability and comprehensibility. With this background changes with respect to general legal rules, judicial and administrative decisions in national law are discussed with emphasis on the general considerations that are made in connection with developing information systems. Next developments in connection with EU law, international law and foreign law are considered and the importance of the Internet is emphasized. At the end it is briefly considered whether the different changes will lead to an improved legal system, to better decisions. This is a possibility but only if the potential of the information society is utilized.

Prior studies investigating racial bias in legal decisions have involved race combinations of an observer, defendant, and victim where the observers’ race was the same as either the defendants’ or victims’ race. Because of the research designs employed in those prior studies, the effects of the three actors all being of different races have not been investigated. It is timely to investigate race effects of the three actors all being different races, given that growing racial diversity in the criminal justice system makes the race combination plausible in a trial, and that race effects observed in prior studies may not generalize to the race combination. Therefore, we examined whether observers’ punitive judgments against a defendant would differ in cross-race crimes (e.g., a white observer–black defendant–Hispanic victim) and same-race crimes (e.g., a white observer–black defendant–black victim), when the observers’ race was different from both the defendant and victim. The present research demonstrated that observers rendered more punitive judgments against the defendant in same-race (vs. cross-race) crimes, particularly when the defendant and victim knew each other. We propose that observers, whose race is different from both the defendant and victim, perceive the defendant and victim in same-race (vs. cross-race) crimes as more homogeneous out-group members. This perceived homogeneity increases punitive judgments in same-race crimes.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide an in-depth analysis of the historical restrictions imposed by the UAE and Jordan on the arbitrability of agency disputes, driven by public policy considerations to protect local agents. It examines recent developments in UAE arbitration law and their alignment with global trends in international arbitration. The study evaluates how these reforms balance local agency interests with contractual autonomy. By offering comparative perspectives, the paper provides valuable lessons for Jordan and other restrictive nations in the Arab world to modernize their arbitration frameworks, reconcile domestic and international priorities, and enhance their appeal for international trade and investment. Design/methodology/approach This paper examines the legal framework for arbitrating commercial agency disputes in Jordan and the UAE, two civil law jurisdictions with a shared tradition but distinctly different approaches. While the UAE’s 2022 reforms have clarified questions regarding arbitrability and aligned its legal framework with internationally recognized standards, Jordan’s framework has retained a framework that tends to be constrained by uncertainties within its domestic laws and an excessive reliance on court jurisdiction. These uncertainties undermine the effectiveness of arbitration, limit access to justice and create problems, particularly for international businesses that value what the arbitration provides. The paper, through a comparative analysis, highlights the gaps in Jordan’s arbitration framework and identifies lessons from the UAE’s balanced reform. It provides actionable recommendations for Jordan, including clarifying arbitrability, reducing court interference and harmonizing domestic laws with international arbitration norms, such as the New York Convention. These steps could enhance Jordan’s dispute resolution system, promote legal certainty and create a business-friendly environment. Thus, it encourages economic growth and international investments. Findings This study compares Jordan’s restrictive arbitration framework for commercial agency disputes with the UAE’s proactive reforms. The UAE’s 2022 legislative changes align its laws with international standards, balancing public policy considerations with arbitration autonomy, positioning it as a regional leader in dispute resolution. Conversely, Jordan’s framework suffers from ambiguities, excessive court reliance and limited application of the Kompetenz-Kompetenz principle, undermining arbitration’s effectiveness and discouraging investment. Key recommendations for Jordan include clarifying arbitrability, reducing judicial intervention and narrowing public policy considerations. Aligning with international standards would foster legal certainty, attract investments and promote Jordan as a hub for international commerce. Practical implications This study provides actionable insights for improving Jordan’s arbitration framework, addressing legal ambiguities and excessive court intervention in commercial agency disputes. By aligning domestic laws with international standards like the UNCITRAL Model Law and the New York Convention, Jordan can enhance legal certainty and arbitration’s effectiveness. Limiting judicial interference and clearly defining public policy considerations will create a more business-friendly environment. These reforms not only strengthen access to justice but also cross-border commerce. Learning from the UAE’s balanced approach, Jordan can position itself as a regional hub for efficient and reliable dispute resolution. Originality/value This research provides a unique contribution by highlighting the uncertainty surrounding the non-arbitrability of commercial agency disputes in Jordan, an area of significant legal importance that has yet to be thoroughly explored. By comparing Jordan’s approach with the UAE’s legislative framework before and after its 2022 reforms, the study offers a legal analysis of two civil law jurisdictions with similar legal traditions but differing approaches to arbitration in distribution disputes. The research sheds light on these contrasts, providing valuable insights into the evolving interplay between arbitration and commercial agency regulation in the region.

: We summarize a cross-disciplinary effort exploring affective biases in decision-making. The work consisted of an empirical and a computational modeling study, within the same synthetic task: a search-and-rescue task. The empirical study assessed effects of anxiety on decision-making (route selection). Participants were more sensitive to probabilities of costs and benefits, than to their quantitative values. Both threat and anxious mood induction (under low threat) appeared to increase sensitivity to loss. With a neutral emotion-induction, trait anxiety was associated with a classic selective attention basis. Anxious individuals sampled information on potential costs more frequently than information on potential gains. This bias was eliminated in the anxious emotion-induction condition. In the neutral condition, anxious subjects may frame decisions as requiring vigilance to threat (i.e., elevated attention and analysis), whereas in the anxious condition, the frame is one of escape (requiring less analysis). Computational modeling studies used the MAMID cognitive-affective architecture to construct a process model of anxiety effects: attentional threat and self-bias, and interpretive threat bias. Different levels of anxiety intensities were encoded in different values of architecture parameters, which controlled processing within the architecture modules, yielding results consistent with existing empirical data. The model was also used to construct alternative mechanisms capable of explaining the observed effects, thereby providing a means of generating candidate hypotheses regarding the nature of the processes mediating the biases. Findings make a methodological contribution in demonstrating how experimental emotion-induction can be successfully employed in a task that is longer, more complex and more demanding than those typically used in affective bias research. The data support the validity of the empirical-computational approach of this project.

On the Problem of Legal Change

— We present VAKIL, a domain-focused virtual assistant for Indian law created by fine-tuning Microsoft’s Phi-3 Mini (4K Instruct) model with Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA). The training corpus comprised curated Supreme Court judgments, constitutional provisions, statutory legislation, and other authoritative legal texts. Fine-tuning was performed on a RunPod RTX A6000 instance for 18 hours across two epochs, yielding a marked decrease in training loss and improved domain alignment. To ensure responses are factually grounded, VAKIL integrates a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipeline: documents are chunked, tokenized, embedded, and indexed using a FAISS semantic vector store to enable high-precision retrieval. For relational and precedent-style reasoning, we construct a Neo4j AuraDB knowledge graph representing cases, statutes, and legal doctrines, and we apply a Graph Neural Network (GNN) over this graph to capture cross-document relationships and citation structure. We evaluate VAKIL through intrinsic measures (loss curves, perplexity, and reductions in hallucination) and extrinsic tasks (legal question answering, statutory interpretation, and judgment summarization). Compared to the unadapted Phi-3 base, our fine-tuned model shows improved accuracy, stronger domain specificity, and greater interpretability. The final model is released on the Hugging Face Hub and served via a serverless vLLM runtime on RunPod to support low-latency API access. A chat-based interface was implemented to support learners, researchers, and legal practitioners. VAKIL offers a reproducible workflow for building regionally focused legal assistants that balance retrieval, graph-based reasoning, and model fine-tuning. It is designed as an educational and research aid—not as a substitute for professional legal advice—and provides a transparent foundation for future enhancements. Key Words: Legal AI, RAG, LoRa, Phi-3, Knowledge Graph, GNN, Indian Law, FAISS, Legal QA, Judgment Summarization.

This chapter explores the impact on taxpayer rights of digital developments in electronics and systems, artificial intelligence, and security. Using an integrated rights framework comprising principles of tax administration and compliance, together with legal rights, it sets out the challenges and opportunities offered by digital disruption. It addresses issues such as proportionality, discrimination, equity and fairness, transparency and bias in legal and administrative decision-making, security, privacy and confidentiality. The chapter takes a global and comparative perspective in addressing significant legal issues that require detailed research and debate. It emphasises the opportunities for government service obligations to taxpayers, using artificial intelligence and secure systems, to provide advanced assistance to taxpayers and businesses and boost economic growth and trade. The chapter concludes that the opportunities are available to enable global implementation of an integrated rights framework to protect taxpayers even more effectively through digital disruption.

This article discusses the judiciary and the role of law. It talks about the implications of the approach for issues in statutory interpretation, and then examines the relationship between the legal and political controls of bureaucracy. The last section in the article focuses on the implications for judicial independence within the larger separation-of-powers system. The emerging literature on Positive Political Theory (PPT) further stresses the political nature of legal decision-making and the dynamic relationship among the legislative, judicial, and executive branches.

The advancement of technology in the healthcare sector, particularly telesurgery, is growing rapidly in Indonesia. Telesurgery is a remote surgical procedure performed with the assistance of robotic systems and wireless networks, enabling surgeons to operate on patients located at a distance. However, this progress has not been accompanied by adequate legal regulations, leading to a legal vacuum in its implementation—especially when malfunctions result in patient death. This research is a normative juridical study that examines various legal rules and principles using secondary data in the form of primary legal documents. Legal materials were collected through literature study, and the method of interpretation used is prescriptive interpretation. This study addresses the absence of legal regulations governing the practice of telesurgery in Indonesia, particularly concerning criminal sanctions and legal liability. The findings show that the regulation of criminal sanctions is essential to provide legal certainty regarding the responsible parties. An ideal regulation should include a definition of telesurgery, qualifications for medical personnel, the rights and obligations of related parties, supervision of medical devices, risk mitigation, and criminal sanctions for medical negligence and product failure.

The advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) technology has brought significant transformations across various sectors, including the judicial system. Countries such as China and the United States have adopted AI in legal decision-making, whereas Indonesia remains in the early stages of implementing this technology. While AI has the potential to enhance judicial efficiency, challenges related to regulation, transparency, and algorithmic bias raise concerns regarding the accuracy and fairness of legal rulings. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the effectiveness of AI utilization in Indonesia’s judicial system, identify key challenges, and propose policy recommendations. This research employs both normative and empirical approaches by examining AI-related regulations and conducting interviews with judges and technology experts in Indonesia. The findings indicate that 65% of judges in Indonesia remain skeptical about AI's role in legal decision-making. In contrast, in countries like China, AI adoption in the judiciary has improved case resolution efficiency by 30–40%. Additionally, a public survey reveals that while 55% of respondents believe AI can enhance the objectivity of legal rulings, 45% remain concerned about potential algorithmic bias. Furthermore, the study highlights that Indonesia lacks specific regulations governing AI in the legal system, which may hinder the widespread adoption of this technology. This research contributes to understanding the readiness of Indonesia’s judicial system in integrating AI and emphasizes the necessity of clear regulations and robust oversight mechanisms to ensure transparency and accountability. The findings are expected to serve as a foundation for policymakers in formulating comprehensive regulations to optimize AI implementation in the Indonesian judicial system

Progressive Legal Thought