Prosecutors Should Demand that Judges Skip Lunch

A study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looked at 1,112 judicial rulings made by eight Israeli parole board judges over a 10-month period. It found that prisoners saw a 65% success rate if their cases were heard early in the day or immediately after a judge had eaten, but the number of requests granted dropped to nearly zero just before a break period and at the end of the day. "A hungry, tired judge, it turns out, is much less likely to grant a defendant’s request than one who has just eaten or taken a break. At least that’s the finding of an ingenious new study looking at the rulings made by Israeli parole board judges in relation to when they had taken a meal break," writes Miller-McCune's Michael Haederle in Judges’ Decisions More Lenient After Lunch. Haederle reports that the researchers don't know whether the judges got grumpier because (1) they grew tired, (2) they were hungry and/or (3) their glucose levels were dropping. [JH]