Judging the Judges: Bringing Transparency to Judicial Reasoning

Judges shape the law… but how far is too far? You might think that Parliament makes the law and judges simply apply it, but judges actually have significant power to shape legal rules. Statutes leave gaps and ambiguities that judges must interpret, creating precedents that must be followed in future cases. Because legal reasoning allows for multiple interpretations, judges have significant leeway to select and frame prior cases in ways that support their preferred outcomes—a practice I call outcome-oriented citation. Scholars have long debated what influences judges to do this, from political and social factors to personal beliefs. What has been missing is a way to systematically assess whether judges are using precedent faithfully or stretching it beyond legitimate legal reasoning. In my PhD, I created Judicial Citation Analysis (JCA), an innovative method for uncovering hidden judicial influences. By analysing patterns in how judges cite and interpret past cases, JCA brings transparency and accountability to judicial decision-making by helping to distinguish between legitimate legal development and precedent misuse. JCA takes us beyond recognising that outcome-oriented citation is a feature of the system to providing a systematic method for uncovering and analysing it, providing a transformative tool for legal scholarship and practice. In my PhD, I applied JCA to the law of financial remedies, which governs how property is divided on divorce. I found that lower courts had distorted Supreme Court rulings on non-discrimination, maintaining an appearance of fidelity to precedent while shifting the law in ways that reinforced systemic gender bias. This raises an important question: how widespread is this practice? JCA can be applied to other areas where judicial discretion plays a large role (eg child law, tort law) and to other common law jurisdictions (eg Ireland, Australia, USA) to assess whether judges are going too far in shaping the law. By exposing the mechanisms of judicial agency, JCA has the potential to improve transparency, consistency, and fairness in the legal system. The fellowship has two main aims: Aim 1: Influence the debate on reforming financial remedies law The Law Commission recently concluded that financial remedies law should be reformed, without making specific recommendations. During this timely fellowship, I will disseminate my findings on systemic gender discrimination and engage with scholars to ensure that this issue is central to reform discussions. In exposing how judicial reasoning reinforces bias in financial remedies law, this work offers a crucial new perspective at a pivotal moment for policy discussions. Aim 2: Establish JCA as a key legal method Judicial integrity is essential to a fair legal system. While many judges perform their roles diligently, without scrutiny of how precedent is actually used, others may reshape the law unchecked. I will establish JCA as a key legal method by: Publishing an article and monograph that explain its key innovations and how to apply it. Sharing my findings with other scholars and exploring ways to improve judicial transparency and accountability. Developing and submitting a funding application for an ambitious large-scale project expanding JCA across different areas of law and jurisdictions, ensuring its findings inform judicial training, legal practice, and public understanding. By equipping scholars, practitioners, and policymakers with a concrete method to assess judicial reasoning, JCA has the potential to drive meaningful change in how precedent is understood and applied.