Reducing Sympathy Bias: The Impact of Statutory Interpretation Methods
- Date: Apr 7, 2025
- Time: 04:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: Ori Katz (Bar-Ilan University, Israel)
- Room: Basement
This article examines the moderating effect of statutory interpretative methods on sympathy bias in
legal decision-making. Previous research has shown that sympathy toward litigants can lead to biased
decisions, particularly in cases of legal ambiguity. Two pre-registered studies, including 300
laypersons and 339 legal practitioners, experimentally tested the effect of various interpretative
methods on sympathy bias. The results reaffirm the existence of sympathy bias, and demonstrate that
participants were less swayed by sympathy when instructed to interpret the law by focusing on its plain
meaning rather than the legislature’s intention or policy considerations. These findings suggest that a
focus on the text of a legal rule can serve as a debiasing technique against sympathy bias. Interestingly,
this moderating effect was not mediated by the effect of the interpretative method on the rule’s clarity
or the decision’s predictability. The findings contribute to ongoing debates about judicial bias and
statutory interpretation.
legal decision-making. Previous research has shown that sympathy toward litigants can lead to biased
decisions, particularly in cases of legal ambiguity. Two pre-registered studies, including 300
laypersons and 339 legal practitioners, experimentally tested the effect of various interpretative
methods on sympathy bias. The results reaffirm the existence of sympathy bias, and demonstrate that
participants were less swayed by sympathy when instructed to interpret the law by focusing on its plain
meaning rather than the legislature’s intention or policy considerations. These findings suggest that a
focus on the text of a legal rule can serve as a debiasing technique against sympathy bias. Interestingly,
this moderating effect was not mediated by the effect of the interpretative method on the rule’s clarity
or the decision’s predictability. The findings contribute to ongoing debates about judicial bias and
statutory interpretation.