Haynes and Boone's Newsroom
Overcoming Judicial Bias
09/30/2009
Stan Perry
Most lawyers have encountered judges who appeared to be biased against them, their clients, or their causes. Although the kind of personal animosity described in Judith S. Stainbrook’s partially tongue-in-cheek article “Strategies for Handling a Hostile Judge,” Litigation, Spring 2007, is fortunately rare, judges are no less human than anyone else, and neither their legal training nor their best intentions can completely eliminate biases and preconceptions from their thinking. Judicial bias may be conscious or unconscious and may take many forms. Over the years, I have learned to recognize various forms of judicial bias and developed some strategies for overcoming them.
Reprinted by permission, American Bar Association, Litigation, Vol. 35, No. 4, Summer 2009.
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