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A few ruminations about judging without empathy (and sentencing by computers)

By Douglas A. Berman

While some SCOTUS nominee "empathy" discussion has been silly, the basic debate over the role of empathy in judging has a number of interesting facets.  The folks at The Volokh Conspiracy, for example, have been talking through the issue in interesting ways in these recent posts: Doctrinally Relevant Empathy and Doctrinally Irrelevant Empathy Understanding the Point at Issue in the Judicial Empathy Debate Though I do not want to jump too deeply into the whole "empathy" debate, I cannot help but ruminate a bit on whether we would find it appealing to have judges without any empathy.  Specifically, I am wondering if most folks would be comfortable and content being judged in various settings by a sophisticated computer rather than by a human being...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on May 29, 2009 (boomark / email).