Computational Border Studies

This project combines critical race and social justice theory with novel computational methods to study the urgent problem of bias within the U.S. court system.

Using court transcripts, we reveal latent trends that govern judicial decisions, and which may ultimately disadvantage certain communities and peoples. Variation in asylum adjudication outcomes across U.S. immigration courts is well-documented, and personal factors are known to play observable (often compounding) roles that exacerbate discrepancies. These disparities suggest that outcomes are less dependent on the facts of the case and more on circumstances surrounding the hearing, including the beliefs and actual or ascribed characteristics of the participants.