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Bias

Sunshine: Support Open Records as One Part of the Answer to Discriminatory Jury Selection

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: America is not yet post-racial, and the Nazis marching this week in Charlottesville, Virginia should be a reminder of that. Continuing tensions on race are played out in courtrooms as well. The as-yet unresolved issues of racial bias in jury selection provide one example. Race-based removals impact the criminal sphere more than […]

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Expect Bias Statements to be Unreliable and Often Overcorrected

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Jurors and judges sit in court and evaluate credibility. They continuously assess who is telling the truth and who isn’t. But what is the bias in those determinations? Lie detection itself is a notoriously uncertain ability, with confidence often high, but with actual ability tending to hover more around the

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Don’t Let Anti-Lawyer Assumptions Keep You Out of the Courtroom

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: It’s an occupational hazard: If you’re a lawyer, then you’re going to hear lawyer jokes. One that I’m fond of is, “There is really only one lawyer joke…all of the rest are true.” That one was used successfully as an icebreaker in voir dire during a recent attorney malpractice defense.

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Adapt to Moral Division (Not Just Political Division)

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: President Trump is doing great, keeping all his promises, even as he is beset with interference from dishonest investigations. He is also failing horribly, embracing  national callousness and international isolation while scandals drag his administration into chaos. Either can be treated as absolute truth, depending on who you’re talking to.

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