The President of the Supreme Court once found himself justifying the inconsistencies in an elderly man’s unconvincing evidence because his mannerisms reminded him of his recently deceased father.
Lord Neuberger recalled the experience while giving a speech on judicial ethics, at the recent Singapore Panel on Judicial Ethics and Dilemmas on the Bench. He said all human beings have preconceived ideas and notions, and the “important thing is that judges are as aware as they can be of any biases or prejudices they suffer from, and that they acknowledge and take into account those biases and prejudices when evaluating witnesses and their evidence.”
He explained that the role of the common law judge is that of umpire in a contest. The introduction of the Jackson reforms, which impose case management duties on the judge, made the judge also a manager but did not impinge on their role of umpire.
Lord Neuberger commented on the extent to which judges can ask questions and raise issues during a trial, which he described as a “thorny issue”. He said it is a “fact-sensitive and discretionary matter”—if the judge asks too many questions there is a danger they will become biased “because he or she has been thinking about the case through the prism of one party’s case”.
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