New research has exposed the highly subjective nature of the judicial system in a startling new light. Prof. Shai Danziger of Tel Aviv University in Israel studied extraneous factors affecting court decisions. Danziger and his team collected thousands of records and compared them to various outside influences on the court to see if correlation could be established.
To their surprise, they found that as judges get closer to lunch or dinner breaks their ruling become harsher on defendants. Once a judge has had a break, it is significantly more likely that the ruling will be in favor of the defendant.
While their study does not conclude that hunger is the driving factor, it is the most likely cause according to the researchers.
As is very clear from the chart below, the best time to go to court is right after a food break (the circled points below indicate the first decision in each session).
