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fortyeridania comments on The Bias You Didn't Expect - Less Wrong
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Very few judicial decisions are actually made entirely during a hearing; despite what you see on television, most major issues are going to be briefed and the judge (or his staff) will have already read the briefs and come to a not-too-tentative decision about how they are going to rule. For issues that are so small as not to be briefed, lawyers have pretty much no control over when these will be heard by the judge, and the stakes tend to be relatively small anyways. Moreover, where there are two parties involved, it seems impossible to predict which direction this effect would take - would the judge be wiser, less wise, less agreeable, lazier? Even if someone were paying careful attention to the data, it seems unlikely they could discern a clear trend, and no one's paying such attention because (A) no one really has an incentive to and (B) the payoff is likely very close to 0 anyways.
Doesn't this strongly cut against the theory that the degree of hunger at the time of the hearing influences the decision?
... is the exact response I wanted to make.
Most legal choices are either incredibly short term - like an objection that a judge must often respond to immediately - or medium to long term - like a motion that a judge will ask for parties to provide briefs (written legal arguments) on. Parole hearing like this are one a few legal decisions where there really is a quick decision made - another area would be bail hearings, but there the outcome isn't binary, it's a dollar amount. There isn't much money to be made in gaming either,.
The Israeli parole result was for a short single high-stakes decision; most hearings are not like that, I think.
No. The study was specifically on parole decisions, which often are made at the time of the hearing, although other judicial decisions generally aren't.