What If Judges Had to ‘Show Their Work’ in Rulings? (Full Transcript)

A reflection on decision transparency, human bias in judging, and why datasets may make reasoning easier to trace than the human mind.

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What If Judges Had to Show Their Work

Added on 06/24/2026

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[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Imagine if human arbitrators or human judges had to show the work of their brain in making decisions. If a human judge had to say, yeah, this is how I got from point A to point B, instead of just writing down what they said the answer was, we'd be interesting. As somebody who reviewed the decisions of human judges for 10 years, I love judges, some of my best friends are judges, they're human beings. And they too have biases. And it is sometimes easier to show your work with a data set than it is with a human brain.

Summary

The speaker reflects on the value of transparency in decision-making, suggesting it would be revealing if human judges had to explicitly explain the mental steps from evidence to verdict. Drawing on a decade of reviewing judicial decisions, they note that judges are human, can hold biases, and that articulating reasoning may be easier with an AI/data-driven system than with the opaque processes of the human mind.

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Title

Transparency, Bias, and ‘Showing Work’ in Judging

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Keywords

judges

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arbitrators Remove

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transparency Remove

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explainability Remove

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bias

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decision-making Remove

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AI

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datasets

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human cognition Remove

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judicial review Remove

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Key Takeaways

Requiring decision-makers to ‘show their work’ would expose how conclusions are reached.
Human judges, like all people, can be influenced by biases.
Explaining a decision path may be more straightforward with datasets/logs than with human cognition.
Calls for transparency apply to both human and algorithmic decision-making.

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Sentiments

Neutral: The tone is reflective and analytical, acknowledging respect for judges while candidly noting human bias and contrasting human reasoning opacity with the potential traceability of data-driven decisions.

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