A PRELIMINARY INQUIRY INTO THE EFFECT OF POTENTIALLY BIASING INFORMATION ON JUDGES AND JURORS IN CIVIL LITIGATION

The American system of civil procedure presumes that judges and jurors will respond quite differently to potentially biasing material introd uced into adjudicatory proceedings. Judges are assumed to possess a sp ecial capacity to control their subjective reactions to such material while jurors are perceived as incapable of such control. This article first reviews these presumptions and the differential treatment accord ed judges and jurors by the system. An experiment in which judges and jurors were exposed to potentially biasing material in a civil trial i s then described. The results suggest that judges and jurors may be si milarly influenced by such exposure, regardless whether the biasing ma terial is ruled admissible or inadmissible. The implications of these preliminary data-that judges may not possess the presumed special capa city to remain immune to bias are briefly discussed.