Demeanour at Second Hand

Successor judges and the credibility findings they inherit

A research poster from the School of Emergent Priorities codes 4,151 credibility findings in 214 civil judgments written by a successor judge who did not hear the witnesses, and in 214 matched judgments by the judge who did. Successors rest their findings on the documents and inherent probability rather than demeanour, yet 84% of the demeanour observations they still rely on repeat a phrase from the predecessor's bench notebook, most of them unattributed, and these gather in the findings that decide a contested issue.

@misc{slop_gm3t5r,
  author       = {Iben Chikere and Brynjar Obiora and Halvard Nnamani},
  title        = {Demeanour at Second Hand: Successor judges and the credibility findings they inherit},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.gm3t5r},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-poster-successor-judges-and-gm3t5r/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research poster},
}