科学技术

　　The science of justice

　　司法的学问

　　I think it's time we broke for lunch…

　　该吃午餐了

　　Court rulings depend partly on when the judge last had a snack

　　法庭判决结果一定程度上取决于法官上一次吃点心的时间

　　AROUND the world, courthouses are adorned with a statue of a blindfolded woman holding a set of scales and a sword:

　　世界各地的法院都装饰有一尊女子的雕像，这个女人被蒙住双眼，手持一架天平和一把剑。

　　Justice personified.

　　她是正义的化身。

　　Her sword stands for the power of the court, her scales for the competing claims of the petitioners.

　　剑代表着法庭的权力，而天平代表着上诉人的竞争性权利主张。

　　The blindfold represents the principle that justice should be blind.

　　眼罩代表着司法的盲目性原则。

　　The law should be applied without fear or favour, with only cold reason and the facts of the case determining what happens to the accused.

　　也就是说应用法律应该毫无畏惧和偏袒之心，只有冷静的推理和案件事实才能决定如何处理被告。

　　Lawyers, though, have long suspected that such lofty ideals are not always achieved in practice, even in well run judicial systems free from political meddling.

　　然而，律师们一直以来都怀疑在实践中这种崇高的理想是否总能实现，就连在那些不受政治干涉、运转良好的司法体系里都是如此。

　　Justice, say the cynics, is what the judge had for breakfast. Now they have proof.

　　犬儒主义者说：司法就是法官的早餐。而且现在他们有了证据。

　　A paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describes how Shai Danziger of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and his colleagues followed eight Israeli judges for ten months as they ruled on over 1,000 applications made by prisoners to parole boards.

　　美国国家科学院学报一篇文章描述了内盖夫本-古里安大学的舍夷?丹齐格和他的几个同事追踪8位以色列法官10个月的事情，在这10个月里法官们裁判了囚犯向假释裁决委员会提出的1000多分申请。

　　The plaintiffs were asking either to be allowed out on parole or to have the conditions of their incarceration changed.

　　申请人要么请求准许假释要么请求改善狱中居住条件。

　　The team found that, at the start of the day, the judges granted around two-thirds of the applications before them.

　　调查小队发现，早晨法官所阅申请的约2/3得到了批准。

　　As the hours passed, that number fell sharply, eventually reaching zero.

　　而随着中午的临近，批准的数量急剧减少，最终接近于0。

　　But clemency returned after each of two daily breaks, during which the judges retired for food.

　　但是在每天的两餐休息时间过后，仁慈又重新降临。

　　The approval rate shot back up to near its original value, before falling again as the day wore on.

　　批准率回到了接近于早晨的水平，并随着时间的消逝再次下跌。

　　To be sure, mealtimes were not the only thing that predicted the outcome of the rulings.

　　当然，用餐时间并非预测判决结果的唯一因素。

　　Offenders who appeared prone to recidivism were more likely to be turned down, as were those who were not in a rehabilitation programme.

　　那些看起来容易再犯的犯人更可能被拒，那些没有参与罪犯改過自新项目的也是一样。

　　Happily, neither the sex nor the ethnicity of the prisoners seemed to matter to the judges.

　　而令人高兴的是，据一个司法专家组成的独立小组评定，

　　Nor did the length of time the offenders had already spent in prison, nor even the severity of their crimes.

　　法官似乎不考虑罪犯的性别、种族、入狱时间长短甚至是他们罪行的严重程度。

　　But after controlling for recidivism and rehabilitation programmes, the meal-related pattern remained.

　　剔除了累犯和改过自新计划这些因素之后，与就餐相关的模式依然存在。

　　The researchers offer two hypotheses for this rise in grumpiness.

　　研究人员就这种暴躁情绪的产生给出了两种假设。

　　One is that blood-sugar level is the crucial variable.

　　其一是血糖浓度是关键的变量，

　　This, though, predicts that the precise amount of time since the judge last ate will be what matters.

　　可是这样就有人会猜测距法官上一次用餐的准确时间是重要的因素。

　　In fact, it is the number of cases he has heard since his last break, not the number of hours he has been sitting, which best matches the data.

　　而事实上，与调查数据最匹配的不是法官坐在那儿工作的时间长短，而是他上一次休息用餐后所审理的案件数量。

　　That is consistent with a second theory, familiar from other studies, that decision making is mentally taxing and that,

　　这就和第二种假设一致起来，即决策是一项耗费心神的劳动，

　　if forced to keep deciding things, people get tired and start looking for easy answers.

　　如果人们被迫一直做决定，那他们会变得疲惫而开始寻找简单的解决办法，这是其他研究也得出的结论。

　　In this case, the easy answer is to maintain the status quo by denying the prisoner's request.

　　既然如此，那简单的解决办法就是拒绝犯人的申请，维持现状。

　　Two further findings buttress the idea that it is the psychological load of decision making which matters.

　　还有另外两个发现可以支持这种精神负担作用的观点。

　　First, the average unfavourable decision took less time to arrive at than the average favourable one.

　　首先，通常作不利的决定比作有利的决定花费的时间短，前者约为5.2分钟，后者约为7.4分钟。

　　Second, it also took more time to explain.

　　其次，后者所花费的解释时间也更长。

　　Written verdicts in favourable rulings averaged 90 words, compared with just 47 for unfavourable ones.

　　有利决定的书面判决通常有90个单词，而不利判决书只有47个单词。

　　In truth, these results, though disturbing, are unsurprising.

　　事实上，尽管这些调查结果令人不安，却是意料之中的事。

　　Judges may be trained to confine themselves to the legally relevant facts before them.

　　法官接受的训练是将自己限制在面前的法律事实范围内。

　　But they are also human,

　　但他们也是凡人，

　　and thus subject to all sorts of cognitive biases which can muddy their judgment.

　　因而也会让各种认知偏见模糊了他们的判断力。

　　Other fields are familiar with human imperfectibility, and take steps to ameliorate it.

　　人性的弱点在其他领域也很常见，人们会采取措施改进这一点。

　　Pilots, for instance, are given checklists to follow, partly in order to combat the effects of fatigue.

　　例如飞行员需要遵循一些清单，其部分原因是为了抵抗疲劳。

　　Lorry drivers in the European Union are not allowed to drive for more than four and a half hours without taking a break.

　　欧盟也不允许卡车司机连续驾驶4.5小时以上。

　　Dr Danziger's co-author, Jonathan Levav of Columbia University in New York, wonders whether the law should consider similar arrangements.

　　丹齐格教授的合著者哥伦比亚大学的乔奈森·勒瓦夫设想司法界是否也能考虑作类似的安排。

　　Some, of course, already do.

　　当然，有些地方已经这样做了。

　　English judges, legendary for their prandial proclivities, are way ahead of him.

　　英国的法官早就想到了这点，所以他们因爱好吃饭而闻名。