Discuss the different decision-making process that a judge considers before passing judgment on a case?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers may vary.Psychologists have a ready explanation for why judges' attitudes and values affect their decisions: When people, including judges, have opinions about desired outcomes, those goals direct how they seek out and weigh empirical evidence. Information congruent with a particular goal is disproportionately attended to and valued, while incongruent evidence is dismissed. This process, called motivated reasoning, is typically outside of a person's awareness, but functions as a powerful determinant of how people evaluate information and reach conclusions about the law. Also relevant to judges' decision making, cognitive psychologists have proposed various two-process models of human judgment. Though the details vary, all the models distinguish between intuitive processes that occur spontaneously, often without careful thought or effort, and deliberative processes that involve mental effort, concentration, motivation, and the application of learned rules. The former is sometimes referred to as System 1 and the latter System 2. Motivated reasoning is implicated in both because end goals can unconsciously steer both intuitive and deliberative evaluations of evidence. A team of law professors has used a two-process model to explain trial judges' decision making and, in particular, to assess how emotions can influence their judgments. They claim that although judges try to make decisions by relying on facts, evidence, and legal rules rather than personal biases or emotions, because they are ordinary people (who happen to wear robes), judges tend, like all of us, to favor intuitive reactions over careful deliberate responses. And though quick judgments can be overridden by complex, deliberative thoughts, judges must expend the effort to do so.