Bias in the Law
Bias in the Law

Author: Joseph Avery

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-02-12

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 1793601046

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Racial bias in the U.S. criminal justice system is much debated and discussed, but until now, no single volume has covered the full expanse of the issue. In Bias in the Law, sixteen outstanding experts address the impact of racial bias in the full roster of criminal justice actors. They examine the role of legislators crafting criminal justice legislation, community enforcers, and police, as well as prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys, judges, and jurors. Understanding when and why bias arises, as well as how it impacts defendants requires a clear understanding how each of these actors operate. Contributions touch on other crucial topics—racialized drug stigma, legal technology, and interventions—that are vital for understanding how the United States has reached this moment of stark racial disparity in incarceration. The result is an important entry into understanding the pervasiveness of racial bias, how such bias impacts legal outcomes, and why such impact matters. This is an issue that is as relevant today as it was fifty—or even one hundred fifty—years ago, and collection editors Joseph Avery and Joel Cooper provide a glimpse at how to proceed.

Implicit Racial Bias Across the Law
Implicit Racial Bias Across the Law

Author: Justin D. Levinson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-04-23

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1107010950

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This book explores how scientific evidence on the human mind might help to explain why racial equality is so elusive. Through the lens of powerful and pervasive implicit racial attitudes and stereotypes, it examines both the continued subordination of historically disadvantaged groups and the legal system's complicity in the subordination.

The Lawyer-Judge Bias in the American Legal System
The Lawyer-Judge Bias in the American Legal System

Author: Benjamin H. Barton

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-12-31

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 1139495585

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Virtually all American judges are former lawyers. This book argues that these lawyer-judges instinctively favor the legal profession in their decisions and that this bias has far-reaching and deleterious effects on American law. There are many reasons for this bias, some obvious and some subtle. Fundamentally, it occurs because - regardless of political affiliation, race, or gender - every American judge shares a single characteristic: a career as a lawyer. This shared background results in the lawyer-judge bias. The book begins with a theoretical explanation of why judges naturally favor the interests of the legal profession and follows with case law examples from diverse areas, including legal ethics, criminal procedure, constitutional law, torts, evidence, and the business of law. The book closes with a case study of the Enron fiasco, an argument that the lawyer-judge bias has contributed to the overweening complexity of American law, and suggests some possible solutions.

Enhancing Justice
Enhancing Justice

Author: Sarah E. Redfield

Publisher: American Bar Association

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781634258371

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This book helps explain how many who pride themselves on being fair can be part of a system which is widely seen as unfair by those who have historically been victims of bias and prejudice. The central focus of the book is on the different approaches that courts can use to lessen the impact of implicit bias by "breaking the bias habit."

Punishing Hate
Punishing Hate

Author: Frederick M. Lawrence

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-07-01

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 0674040015

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Bias crimes are a scourge on our society. Is there a more terrifying image in the mind's eye than that of the burning cross? Punishing Hate examines the nature of bias-motivated violence and provides a foundation for understanding bias crimes and their treatment under the U.S. legal system. In this tightly argued book, Frederick Lawrence poses the question: Should bias crimes be punished more harshly than similar crimes that are not motivated by bias? He answers strongly in the affirmative, as do a great many scholars and citizens, but he is the first to provide a solid theoretical grounding for this intuitive agreement, and a detailed model for a bias crimes statute based on the theory. The book also acts as a strong corrective to recent claims that concern about hate crimes is overblown. A former prosecutor, Lawrence argues that the enhanced punishment of bias crimes, with a substantial federal law enforcement role, is not only permitted by doctrines of criminal and constitutional law but also mandated by our societal commitment to equality. Drawing upon a wide variety of sources, from law and criminology, to sociology and social psychology, to today's news, Punishing Hate will have a lasting impact on the contentious debate over treatment of bias crimes in America.

The Beauty Bias
The Beauty Bias

Author: Deborah L. Rhode

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2010-05-06

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0199779457

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"It hurts to be beautiful" has been a cliche for centuries. What has been far less appreciated is how much it hurts not to be beautiful. The Beauty Bias explores our cultural preoccupation with attractiveness, the costs it imposes, and the responses it demands. Beauty may be only skin deep, but the damages associated with its absence go much deeper. Unattractive individuals are less likely to be hired and promoted, and are assumed less likely to have desirable traits, such as goodness, kindness, and honesty. Three quarters of women consider appearance important to their self image and over a third rank it as the most important factor. Although appearance can be a significant source of pleasure, its price can also be excessive, not only in time and money, but also in physical and psychological health. Our annual global investment in appearance totals close to $200 billion. Many individuals experience stigma, discrimination, and related difficulties, such as eating disorders, depression, and risky dieting and cosmetic procedures. Women bear a vastly disproportionate share of these costs, in part because they face standards more exacting than those for men, and pay greater penalties for falling short. The Beauty Bias explores the social, biological, market, and media forces that have contributed to appearance-related problems, as well as feminism's difficulties in confronting them. The book also reviews why it matters. Appearance-related bias infringes fundamental rights, compromises merit principles, reinforces debilitating stereotypes, and compounds the disadvantages of race, class, and gender. Yet only one state and a half dozen localities explicitly prohibit such discrimination. The Beauty Bias provides the first systematic survey of how appearance laws work in practice, and a compelling argument for extending their reach. The book offers case histories of invidious discrimination and a plausible legal and political strategy for addressing them. Our prejudices run deep, but we can do far more to promote realistic and healthy images of attractiveness, and to reduce the price of their pursuit.

Unfair
Unfair

Author: Adam Benforado

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 0770437761

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A legal scholar exposes the psychological forces that undermine the American criminal justice system, arguing that unless hidden biases are addressed, social inequality will widen, and proposes reforms to prevent injustice and help achieve true equality before the law.

Bias Challenges in International Commercial Arbitration
Bias Challenges in International Commercial Arbitration

Author: Sam Luttrell

Publisher: Kluwer Law International B.V.

Published: 2009-01-01

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 9041131914

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Shows how 'dirty' challenge tactics are made viable primarily by the prevalence of a judicially derived test for bias which focuses on appearances, rather than facts and He argues that the most commonly used test of bias, the 'reasonable apprehension' test, makes it easy to allege a lack of impartiality and independence.

Animus
Animus

Author: William D. Araiza

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2017-04-04

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 1479848808

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An introduction to the legal concept of unconstitutional bias. If a town council denies a zoning permit for a group home for intellectually disabled persons because residents don’t want “those kinds of people” in the neighborhood, the town’s decision is motivated by the public’s dislike of a particular group. Constitutional law calls this rationale “animus.” Over the last two decades, the Supreme Court has increasingly turned to the concept of animus to explain why some instances of discrimination are unconstitutional. However, the Court’s condemnation of animus fails to address some serious questions. How can animus on the part of people and institutions be uncovered? Does mere opposition to a particular group’s equality claims constitute animus? Does the concept of animus have roots in the Constitution? Animus engages these important questions, offering an original and provocative introduction to this type of unconstitutional bias. William Araiza analyzes some of the modern Supreme Court’s most important discrimination cases through the lens of animus, tracing the concept from nineteenth century legal doctrine to today’s landmark cases, including Obergefell vs. Hodges and United States v. Windsor, both related to the legal rights of same-sex couples. Animus humanizes what might otherwise be an abstract legal question, illustrating what constitutes animus, and why the prohibition against it matters more today than ever in our pluralistic society.

Blinding as a Solution to Bias
Blinding as a Solution to Bias

Author: Christopher T Robertson

Publisher: Academic Press

Published: 2016-01-30

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 0128026332

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What information should jurors have during court proceedings to render a just decision? Should politicians know who is donating money to their campaigns? Will scientists draw biased conclusions about drug efficacy when they know more about the patient or study population? The potential for bias in decision-making by physicians, lawyers, politicians, and scientists has been recognized for hundreds of years and drawn attention from media and scholars seeking to understand the role that conflicts of interests and other psychological processes play. However, commonly proposed solutions to biased decision-making, such as transparency (disclosing conflicts) or exclusion (avoiding conflicts) do not directly solve the underlying problem of bias and may have unintended consequences. Robertson and Kesselheim bring together a renowned group of interdisciplinary scholars to consider another way to reduce the risk of biased decision-making: blinding. What are the advantages and limitations of blinding? How can we quantify the biases in unblinded research? Can we develop new ways to blind decision-makers? What are the ethical problems with withholding information from decision-makers in the course of blinding? How can blinding be adapted to legal and scientific procedures and in institutions not previously open to this approach? Fundamentally, these sorts of questions—about who needs to know what—open new doors of inquiry for the design of scientific research studies, regulatory institutions, and courts. The volume surveys the theory, practice, and future of blinding, drawing upon leading authors with a diverse range of methodologies and areas of expertise, including forensic sciences, medicine, law, philosophy, economics, psychology, sociology, and statistics. - Introduces readers to the primary policy issue this book seeks to address: biased decision-making. - Provides a focus on blinding as a solution to bias, which has applicability in many domains. - Traces the development of blinding as a solution to bias, and explores the different ways blinding has been employed. - Includes case studies to explore particular uses of blinding for statisticians, radiologists, and fingerprint examiners, and whether the jurors and judges who rely upon them will value and understand blinding.