Judging Bias: Juror Confidence and Judicial Rulings on Challenges for Cause Mary R. Rose Shari Seidman Diamond The judge in a jury trial is charged with excusing prospective jurors who will not be impartial. To assess impartiality, prospective jurors are typically asked whether they can be fair. Using an experimental paradigm, we found that small changes in jurors’ self-reported confidence in their ability to be fair affected judges’ decisions about bias but did not affect the judgments of either attorneys or jurors. We suggest why a judge’s role and unique relationship with jurors is likely to foster a decision strategy based on reported juror confidence, and we discuss the implications of our analysis for current legal debates over jury selection practices. Unexpected patterns in our results also highlight the ways in which perceptions of impartiality are affected, in part, by the social characteristics of the observer. The U.S. Constitution entitles a criminal defendant to trial by an impartial jury. 1 During jury selection questioning (called voir dire), trial judges are charged with evaluating whether each prospective juror is able and willing to evaluate evidence and to reach decisions with an open mind. This determination presents a challenging task. Ample evidence reveals that perceptions and decisions are necessarily influenced by prior beliefs and experience (e.g., Culhane et al. 2004; Lord et al. 1979; Hastie et al. 1983). Indeed, the diversity of backgrounds and experiences on the jury is counted as one of its great strengths (e.g., Peters v. Kiff 1972; Sommers 2006). The key, then, is to assess when the attitudes and beliefs that are formed by background and experience constitute unacceptable bias. If they do, the trial judge is obligated to excuse the prospective juror ‘‘for cause.’’ The judge’s behavior in making these decisions has been almost entirely ignored by researchers, while other forms of Law & Society Review, Volume 42, Number 3 (2008) r 2008 by The Law and Society Association. All rights reserved. 513 We gratefully acknowledge the support of the American Bar Foundation, as well as the court administrators, judges, and supervisory attorneys who generously assisted with data collection. Please address correspondence to Mary R. Rose, Department of Sociology, 1 University Station, A1700, Austin, TX 78712-1088; e-mail: mrose@austin.utexas.edu. 1 U.S. Constitution, Amendment VI, states in part: ‘‘In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed . . ..’’