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Writer's pictureSuzanne Visser

The impact of irrelevant factors on judicial decisions

How judges and magistrates are influenced by irrelevant factors is described by Schauer in What the judge had for breakfast (2009). Recent work in cognitive science provides

strong evidence for a link between emotion and moral judgment. Judges and magistrates in Alice Springs process heavy caseloads of vulnerable offenders and victims, and

are constantly witnessing tragedy.

The occupational health and wellbeing of judicial officers is a matter of public safety. In Australia, judicial stress was first described in a lecture by Justice Kirby in 1995 as an unmentionable topic.18 In 1997 he raised the topic again and noted that he hoped there was now more recognition of the deep malaise within our legal institutions. It took the suicides of two magistrates in Victoria, in 2017 and 2018, for the issue to become a

subject of interest.

There has, to my knowledge, been no empirical investigation of the association between working location and judicial stress in Australia. To develop responses and interventions to address the stress experienced by remote judicial officers, a better understanding is needed of the drivers of this stress, and of which judicial officers are experiencing the most stress. It would be beneficial to have a national study of judicial stress and wellbeing, along

with occupational and wellbeing supports in the form of judicial education for magistrates and other judicial officers in high-volume summary jurisdictions such as Alice Springs.

There are indications that an unexpected solution for this problem is nearing: a great equaliser in the form of decentralised justice or blockchain justice.

De Filippi, in Blockchain and the Law: The Rule of Code, describes how blockchain may improve the criminal justice system using a distributed-ledger architecture. Criminal charges may be shared and tracked in a ledger accessible by law enforcement, prosecution, courts, probation, defense attorneys, and corrections organisations. When charges were added or dropped by law enforcement, prosecution, or courts, that information would be posted to the ledger, with the expected result being a faster, more efficient administration of justice. In later stages the judge may become largely obsolete, and unbiased justice would result.

England and Wales are already moving towards this system, and the European Commission has adopted the ‘Ethical Principles Relating to the Use of Artificial Intelligence

(AI) in Judicial Systems’.


Image: iT News

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