Kluwer: Emergency Arbitration under Ecuadorian Law: Is Noise Treatment Required?

Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate in economics, in Noise: A flaw in human judgment defines “noise” as unwanted variability in judgments. Whereas biases are systematic errors, noise refers to similar cases having different assessments or outcomes. If judges are generally more lenient with well-behaved suspects, their decisions are biased. But if one judge imposes a two-week prison sentence for a counterfeit check and another judge imposes a 20-year prison sentence for an identical crime, those rulings are noisy.