Hidden Currents in Judicial Reasoning: Cognitive Biases and Moral Intuitions in the Pakistani Judiciary

• Kiran Nisar

  Author

Judicial decision-making is conventionally portrayed as a fortress of impartial rationality, yet decades of psychological scholarship reveal that judges remain vulnerable to cognitive biases and rapid moral intuitions that subtly shape legal outcomes. Adopting an interpretivist paradigm, this qualitative study investigates the interplay of cognitive and moral psychological factors in the reasoning processes of Pakistani judges. Data were generated through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 12 retired judges, 10 senior advocates, and 8 experienced court clerks, whose accounts were subjected to reflexive thematic analysis. Emergent themes illuminate the pervasive yet often unconscious influence of confirmation bias in the interpretation of precedent, anchoring effects in sentencing determinations, in-group moral favouritism under institutional pressures, and post-hoc rationalisation of discretionary rulings. While participants uniformly emphasised doctrinal fidelity and personal commitment to impartiality, their narratives reveal how implicit cognitive shortcuts and culturally embedded moral foundations quietly contour judgment. By synthesising insights from dual-process theories of cognition and contemporary moral psychology, the study offers a contextualised portrait of judicial psychology in a non-Western, post-colonial legal system. It concludes that genuine enhancement of judicial impartiality in Pakistan requires systematic integration of psychological literacy, bias-awareness training, and structured deliberative practices into judicial education and ongoing professional development. Such measures promise not only greater cognitive transparency but also stronger ethical resilience within the judiciary.

• pdf