That story about judges being meaner before lunch? It’s probably just a myth based on how they schedule their day.
March 20, 2026
Original Paper
Cognitive Depletion and Judicial Fairness: The Impact and Mitigation of Decision Fatigue in Courtroom Outcomes
SSRN · 6376258
The Takeaway
One of the most cited findings in behavioral economics suggests that judicial fairness is tied to glucose levels and decision fatigue. This synthesis reveals that once you account for case-ordering confounds (like simpler cases being scheduled after breaks), the 'exhausted judge' explanation largely disappears.
From the abstract
<p><span>Decision fatigue has become a prominent explanation for why legal outcomes may vary across a workday even when law and facts should not. This essay synthesizes the literature on judicial decision fatigue and examines three questions: what the construct means, how strong the evidence is, and which interventions are most defensible. This essay also forms part of a broader project investigating AI-assisted literature synthesis across multiple domains of decision fatigue. Preliminary litera