Prejudice in Practice : Examining the Sources and Targets of Bias in Kenya's Judiciary

Collecting the available universe of High Court decisions in Kenya, we leverage the random assignment of cases to judges to evaluate the extent and drivers of judicial bias along gender and ethnic lines. We find that defendants are 4 or 5 percentage points more likely to win if they share the judge’s gender or ethnicity, respectively, but there is no in-group bias towards plaintiffs. We show that this effect is driven by mild bias among a large group of judges. We also find that judges displaying stereotypical or negative gender attitudes in their written judgments are more likely to display gender bias in their decisions. These results provide evidence that judicial bias is rooted in prejudiced attitudes, widespread but relatively mild, and conditional on whom the bias is targeting. This evidence sheds new light on the sources of, and potential solutions to, judicial bias