Court Review: The Journal of the American Judges Association, Volume 49, Issue 2, Editor\u27s Note

Day after day, judges make decisions. Given the amount of time judges devote to decision making, it’s logical for an organization devoted to helping judges do a better job—and its flagship journal—to focus on the subject. And we are. Last year, the American Judges Association obtained a grant from the State Justice Institute so that we could hire a researcher to help us look at this issue. Pamela Casey, a researcher with the National Center for State Courts, worked with AJA judges throughout 2012, jointly exploring the science of decision making, how what’s known about that science is likely to have the greatest impact on judges, and how judges might take this information into account in their daily work. The result was the third white paper produced by the American Judges Association since 2007—a paper presented at the AJA’s annual educational conference in New Orleans in October 2012. That paper is the lead article for this special issue on judicial decision making