Ethics

We've seen a lot of interesting scholarship on this theme, including from Andy Perlman and this article I posted about last week.  Here are two more in that vein.

Cassandra Robertson (Case Western), "Judgment, Identity, and Independence."  Abstract:

Whenever a new corporate or governmental scandal erupts, onlookers ask "Where were the lawyers?" Why would attorneys not have advised their clients of the risks posed by conduct that, from an outsider's perspective, appears indefensible? When numerous red flags have gone unheeded, people often conclude that the lawyers' failure to sound the alarm must be caused by greed, incompetence, or both. A few scholars have suggested that unconscious cognitive bias may better explain such lapses in judgment, but they have not explained why particular situations are more likely than others to encourage such bias. This article seeks to fill that gap. Drawing on research from behavioral and social psychology, it suggests that lawyers' apparent lapses in judgment may be caused by cognitive biases arising from partisan kinship between lawyer and client. The article uses identity theory to distinguish particular situations in which attorney judgment is likely to be compromised, and it recommends strategies to enhance attorney independence and minimize judgment errors.

Moses Shayo & Asaf Zussman, "Judicial Ingroup Bias in the Shadow of Terrorism."  (It deals with Israeli judges) Abstract:

We study ingroup bias -- the preferential treatment of members of one's group -- in naturally occurring data, where economically significant allocation decisions are made under a strong non-discriminatory norm. Data come from Israeli small claims courts during 2000-04, where the assignment of a case to an Arab or Jewish judge is essentially random. We find robust evidence for judicial ingroup bias. Furthermore, this bias increases with terrorism intensity in the vicinity of the court in the year preceding the ruling. The results are consistent with theory and lab evidence according to which salience of group membership enhances social identification.