Stay Tuned, Because Study of Israeli Judges Suggests Some Truth to This.
Okay, time for some “off topic” fun, under the heading, "justice, justice, shall you pursue." (Deut. 16:18-21:9).
We litigators know that there is a maxim that justice may well depend on “what the judge ate for breakfast.” Well, that idea was tested when researchers reported results of studying 1,112 rulings by Israeli judges in criminal parole board proceedings. The results were reported in today’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
What were the results?
At the beginning of a court session, about 65% of the rulings tended to favor the prisoner, but the chance of a favorable ruling declined to near zero by the end of the session. After a break for a meal, however, favorable rulings for prisoners jumped back up to about 65% but then began declining again. “We find that the likelihood of a favorable ruling is greater at the very beginning of the work day or after a food break than later in the sequence of cases,” the researchers reported.