No judicial-bias study achieves perfect counterfactual identification of race effects.

Evidence

There exist different methods and statistical procedures that can be utilized to attempt to control for observable as well as unobservable attributes of the case and the defendant, and to account for the issue of selection, when relevant. In doing so, the goal is to create a “counterfactual” scenario to a judicial decision in an effort to mimic a research design where the race of the defendant is altered while all else that matters remains the same. … Suffice it to say that there is no study that relies on perfect counterfactuals to identify the causal impact of the attributes of key players (e.g., the race of defendant, the gender of the judge) in judicial outcomes. Nevertheless, the studies cited in this article employ credible statistical procedures that arguably make causal inferences regarding the impact of race and gender on judicial decisions. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 740

Categorization

• XREF: Relevant to the reader’s methodological need to assess how bias is measured — the counterfactual ideal and its limits echo the implicit-vs-explicit measurement gap elsewhere in this volume.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law: A Definitive Look at…, 740