ABSTRACT
Any treatment of persuasion must concern itself with audience. The identity and characteristics of the target of the persuasion can influence and alter the process and substance of the persuasive message. Justice Roberts's often-quoted view that what judges do is simply take the rules of law and apply them somewhat mechanically to the facts of given cases has been rejected by most legal thinkers. The accounts of how judges decide are copious and often conflicting. Legal commentary in particular has varied and evolved, with the formalism of the classical view overtaken by legal realists who emphasized the primacy of experience over formal logic and critical legal scholars who focused on judging as largely result oriented. Judges are also susceptible to cognitive biases. Among other biases, empirical studies have shown that judges are susceptible to anchoring bias, hindsight bias, and egocentric bias to the same extent as nonlaw-trained subjects.
