PERSONALITY THEORY AND JUDGING: A Proposed Theory of Self‐Esteem and Judicial Policy‐Making

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Abstract
Although a variety of explanatory models have been used in recent years to explain and describe individual and aggregate judicial policy‐making, little attention has been devoted to how a judge's personality may affect his or her policy choices on the bench. In fact, psychological models are important for understanding twentieth‐century jurisprudence as well as for conceptualizing the conditions under which an individual decision maker will exercise policy‐making discretion. This article uses a theory of self‐esteem to propose how a judge's personality configuration is related to those role orientations affecting decisional outcomes. The authors also discuss how differential levels of self‐esteem may affect a judge's sentencing policy.

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