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- Title
Do judges hate speculators?
- Authors
Hornuf, Lars; Klöhn, Lars
- Abstract
Historically, people have often expressed negative feelings toward speculators, a sentiment that might have even been reinforced since the latest financial crisis, during which taxpayer money was warranted or spent to bail out reckless investors. In this paper, we conjecture that judges may also have anti-speculator sentiment, which might affect their professional decision making. We asked 123 professional lawyers and 247 law students in Germany this question, and they clearly predicted that judges would have an anti-speculator bias. However, in an actual behavioral study, 185 judges did not exhibit such bias. In another sample of 170 professional lawyers, we found weak support for an anti-speculator bias. This evidence suggests that an independent audience may actually perceive unbiased judgments as biased. While the literature usually suggests that a communication problem exists between lawyers and non-lawyers (i.e. between judges and the general public), we find that this problem can also exist within the legal community.
- Subjects
GERMANY; SPECULATORS; ATTITUDES of judges; DECISION making in law; LEGAL judgments; LAWYERS
- Publication
European Journal of Law & Economics, 2019, Vol 47, Issue 2, p147
- ISSN
0929-1261
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s10657-018-09608-z