'What's Law Got To Do With It?'

This past spring I was fortunate enough to attend a mini-conference at the University of Indiana Maurer School of Law that ostensibly drew upon Tina Turner's classic "What's Love Got to Do With It" for its title. It was a very interesting conference that saw academics and judges coming together to analyze, um, judicial decision making. Here's some copy from the conference website:

This conference will explore the interplay between law and other influences on judicial decision-making, and the implications of that interplay for judicial selection and public confidence in the courts. The goal is to highlight the recent spate of empirical scholarship that has moved away from dichotomous arguments pitting law against attitude, and toward a more nuanced and eclectic way of looking at what judges do. Examining this debate and the related research will help us to assess questions like: How should judges be selected and regulated? Is the public likely to care about judicial selection and decision-making? What is still missing from our knowledge about the work that judges do?

The conference was put together by master of ceremonies and Indiana law professor Charles Geyh. The distinguished judges attending included federal district court judge Sarah Evans Barker, Indiana Supreme Court Justice Frank Sullivan, and Indian Court of Appeals Judge Nancy Vaidik. Professor Geyh noted that:

"For a long time, the debate over this issue was presented as an either-or proposition," he said. "Do judges follow the law, or do they follow their ideological predilections? Recent interdisciplinary research corroborates the common-sense view that judicial decision-making is more complicated than that and is subject to an array of influences. By bringing together scholars and the judges who make the decisions, we were able to have a free-flowing exchange of ideas. I think both the judges and the academics came away with a greater understanding of one another."

The conference's website includes the pdf copies of the papers/remarks as well as mp3 audio of the presentations. You can even hear Justice Sullivan passionately quote Tina Turner.