Sociological factors affecting the judicial decision making of judges in contentious cases in Turkey

The judicial decision-making process refers to the judge’s process of concluding a case. According to legal formalism, the judge decides based on legal rules in their decision- making processes. As opposed to legal formalism, legal realism argues that judges are affected by multiple factors in their judicial decision-making processes, such as their life, education, professional experiences, personal beliefs, etc. The research question is, what are the sociological factors that affect the judges’ judicial decision-making processes in controversial cases in Turkey? The significance of this research is that judiciary investigations study in the legal discipline framework. However, sociological studies on the judiciary in the international works are gradually gaining intensity. These studies enable to see human factor in the various dimensions of the judiciary. This dissertation aims to contribute to the developing interdisciplinary approach from sociology to jurisdiction. The qualitative research method was used in this study. The sample of this thesis is that judges who work in Turkey, and their ages are between 30 and 55. The study’s data were obtained by conducting in-depth interviews with ten judges and using the researcher’s semi-structured interview form. The collected data were analyzed by applying the content analysis method. The dissertation findings show that based on Bourdieu's theoretical perspective, class, family, education, and culture affect judicial decision making, but in addition to these factors, emotions, experiences, gender, workload, medya, social pressure factors also influence the judicial decision- making processes of the judges in Turkey.