ABSTRACT: Judges sometimes deceive the public as to how they will rule—or how they have ruled—in important cases. To be confirmed to our highest courts, they often hide or downplay their moral and political commitments, despite being nominated specifically for those commitments. To justify their rulings, they couch their reasoning in antiseptic legal terms, even when we have excellent cause to see such reasoning as pretextual. This essay argues that such forms of judicial deceit are disturbingly common, deeply harmful, and appropriately understood as a form of gaslighting.
G. Alex Sinha (Sun,) studied this question.