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Weather as an Extralegal Factor of Judicial Decision-Making

Student: Makkoveeva Arina

Supervisor: Ella L. Paneyakh

Faculty: Saint-Petersburg School of Social Sciences

Educational Programme: Sociology (Bachelor)

Final Grade: 10

Year of Graduation: 2018

How do judges make their decisions? Do they rely only on legal factors, as the formalists suggest they do, or there are other psychological, political and social factors that can influence judicial decision making, as the realists maintain? The present study examines the connection between the judge's sentence regarding the length of the real unconditional period of imprisonment and the weather conditions on the day of the court's decision. The database on judicial decisions was obtained from the Institute for the Rule of Law at the European University at St. Petersburg (IRL). The data includes the decisions of all district and regional courts in the criminal cases of adults of the Russian Federation for the period from 2009-2014. Data on weather conditions was taken from European Center for the Medium-range Weather Forecasting and included daily precipitation, wind force and temperature. As a method of data analysis in this work, linear regression with fixed effects was used. The results of the research showed the presence of the influence of the weather on the decision of the judge: the higher is the air temperature, the more likely is the chance to get a smaller length of the real unconditional period of imprisonment.

Full text (added May 27, 2018)

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