Judges’ Secret Bias Revealed
The chief judge of the federal appeals court based in New York City has a startling confession to make: Judges have a secret bias in favor of all things legal, including lawyers.
Dennis G. Jacobs said in a speech published this spring (PDF posted by the New York Times) that judges focus on procedure and “the lawyered solution,” failing to take into account litigants’ transaction costs, Adam Liptak writes in his Sidebar column for the New York Times (sub. req.).
The speech, published in the Fordham Law Review, says judges have an “inbred preference for outcomes controlled by proceduralism, the adversary system, hearings and experts, representation by lawyers, ramified complexity of doctrines and rules, multiple prongs, and all things that need and use lawyers, enrich them, and empower them.”
Liptak writes that Jacobs put his views into practice when he dissented in an appeal involving the First Amendment and trivial amounts of money.
“After years of litigation over $2, the majority will impose on a busy judge to conduct a trial on this silly thing, and require a panel of jurors to set aside their more important duties of family and business in order to decide it,” he complained. “This is not a case that should occupy the mind of a person who has anything consequential to do.”
