For more than half a century, the American legal system has formally eschewed race-based discrimination, and nearly every field of law has evolved to increase protections for minority groups historically burdened by racial prejudice. Notwithstanding this, the issue of racial bias continues to influence calculations of tort damages for pain and suffering.

In this paper, Maytal Gilboa, an Associate Professor at Western University’s Faculty of Law, argues that tort law currently has no reliable mechanism for detecting and correcting implicit biases that may inform jurors’ assessments of Black plaintiffs’ pain and suffering. Professor Gilboa’s review of empirical and experimental studies provides a foundation to understanding the implications not only of racial bias, but other types of biases as well.

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This work is also available online at https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/glr/vol56/iss2/4