Those appointed byDemocrats found for the plaintiff 27

Able Forensic Investigations consists of amulti-disciplinary team that consults with private and corporate clients tocreate or evaluate internal control procedures and conduct thorough electronicsurveillance detection by trained specialists.Howard EisemannCEOAble Forensic Investigations, Inc866 302 This release was issued through WebWire(R).For more information visit http:// Forensic Investigations, IncHoward Eisemann, CEO, Able Forensic Investigations, Inc, 1-866-302-2366,. Workplace Racial Harassment Decisions in US Federal Court Affected by Judges'Race, Study FindsCarnegie Mellon, University of Pittsburgh Research Pinpoints Impact of Race,Political Affiliation on Case OutcomesPITTSBURGH, Jan. 26 /PRNewswire/ Long-held assumptions that the judicialdecision-making process is always objective and color-blind is challenged bynew research conducted by the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie MellonUniversity and the University of Pittsburgh School of Law A study of hundredsof U.S. (Logo: http:// )The researchers found that African American judges - which currentlyrepresent about 11 percent of all federal court judges - rule in favor ofthe plaintiff nearly 46 percent of the time, more than twice as often as Whitejudges (20.6 percent) and the overall average plaintiff success rate (22percent).This finding is the result of an analysis of a randomly selectedsample of 428 federal cases representing 40 percent of all reported workplaceracial harassment cases from six federal circuits between 1981 and 2003.Robert E. Kelley of Carnegie Mellon and Pat Chew of Pitt conducted the study. "Rather, differences in theirsocial and cultural experiences due to race can influence their interpretationof laws."Pinpointing the Impact of Race, Political Affiliation and Case CharacteristicsThe study - titled "Myth of the Color-Blind Judge: An Empirical Analysis ofRacial Harassment Cases" - offers important insight into specific ways thatfactors such as race or political affiliation can impact the judicialdecision-making process, according to the authors.

For example, AfricanAmerican and White judges exhibited similar decision-making patterns in overtcases that involved racial slurs, ruling for the plaintiff 30 and 34 percentmore often, respectively, when compared to cases without racial slurs.However, other types of overt cases - such as those involving harassment bysupervisors and co-workers - resulted in White judges ruling in favor ofplaintiffs 81 percent more often, but a less than 1 percent increase inplaintiff rulings from African American judges. Chew, professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law,speculates that this disparity results from the difference in how White andAfrican American judges perceive racial harassment. "Our data suggests it isnot the workplace racial harassment in and of itself that is responsible forthe dissimilarities in how judges of different races decide these cases," shesaid. "Neither group is inattentive to legal principles; they simply differ intheir interpretation and understanding of the dispute." Interestingly, the study also found that a judge's gender had almost no impacton outcomes of cases involving workplace racial harassment.

However, politicalaffiliation - a deciding factor in how judges are appointed - did have asignificant impact, particularly for White judges. Those appointed byDemocrats found for the plaintiff 27.1 percent of the time, while plaintiffswho came before Republican-appointed White judges won only 16.6 percent of thetime. Political affiliation proved much less a factor than race for AfricanAmerican judges, with Democrat-appointed judges ruling for the plaintiff about47 percent of the time while Republican appointees finding for the plaintiffabout 43 percent of the time. The Case for a More Diverse JudiciaryChew and Kelley believe that an underlying value of the study is itsdemonstration of the ability of judges to more keenly appreciate theperspective of plaintiffs who come from similar racial backgrounds.