Chat GPT, Bad Guys, & Beds

Today's DJ has PJ Gilbert's monthly column, The Horror! The Horror!, about ChatGPT writing judicial opinions.

And the DJ also has Myron Moskovitz's Judging Bad Guys. Par II: The Study, about a study showing that "Sometimes, judges bend or even ignore finding facts and applying the law in a quest to stick it to a party they see as a Bad Guy." See Wistrich, Rachlinski, & Guthrie, Heart vs. Head: Do Judges Follow the Law or Follow Their Feelings (2015) 93 Texas L.Rev. 855, which concludes:

Troubling or not, judges’ emotional reactions are inevitable.  Judges are not computers.  By design, the justice system is a human process, and, like jurors, judges are influenced by their emotions to some degree, even when we would prefer that they were not, and however sincerely they may try to prevent it. This is simply reality.  If we criticize judges for this “shortcoming”—which, of course, entails advantages as well as disadvantages—then we might as well criticize successful species such as alligators for their inability to fly.  The problem is not that judges cannot do something that they are supposed to do; rather, the problem is that we ought never to have expected them to be able to do it in the first place. Our unrealistic expectations set them up for failure and set us up for disillusionment. The more constructive approach is to acknowledge the reality that judges are influenced by affective responses to litigants, and to the extent that we are uncomfortable with that fact, to take steps to ameliorate it.

Beds' March column is out now: Bedsworth: Stranger Than Fiction ... Science Fiction, about New Zealand will tax cow burps.