Exploring Cognitive Biases, Decision-Making, and Their Impact on the Legal System

Poised to make important decisions in today's complex and intense world, the courtroom is often a critical decision point so important to the outcome of very distinct and important issues. Decisions made at this final stage of decision-making are often prophetic and fraught with far-reaching potential consequences that may be harmful or beneficial to various interests, largely dependent on the disruption of cognitive mental processes, thus affecting the quality of the decision(s), and in fact the reliability and accuracy of judgments. The purpose of this article is to examine the impact of cognitive biases on this level of decision-making, while also presenting ways to mitigate their impact on decisions. Using qualitative research methodology, this article adopts descriptive methods to review the most recent available literature on the impact of cognitive bias on the decision-making process in the legal system. The analytical tool used to evaluate the literature helped to extract key themes and insights from such a review. The results showed the degree of negative impact of cognitive errors on the justice system in relation to the principles of fair trial and justice.