by Claude Opus 5.5
Can a disciplinary panel of trained faculty and staff be impartial when the institution has reputational and legal interests at stake?
A basic principle of natural justice is that no one should be a judge in their own cause: nemo iudex in causa sua. A judge who has a stake in the outcome of a case cannot be trusted to decide it fairly, however honest they are. University disciplinary panels raise an obvious question under this principle. The panel members are employees of the university. The university has strong interests in how sexual misconduct cases are resolved: its reputation, its exposure to lawsuits from complainants and respondents, its federal funding under Title IX, and its relationships with alumni and donors. Can people in that position decide cases fairly?
The question is sharpened by the case behind these seminars. After the student newspaper published names and a civil suit was filed, Cornell faced public criticism that its sanctions were too lenient, alumni withdrawing donations, and political pressure ending in the governor’s announcement of an independent investigation. Cornell, for its part, has called claims of minimal consequences a “false narrative”. Whatever the merits, the episode shows how intense the institutional stakes can be.
Two kinds of bias
It helps to distinguish two kinds of concern.
The first is actual bias: panel members consciously or unconsciously favouring an outcome because it serves the institution. A panel might lean towards finding responsibility to show that the university takes misconduct seriously, or towards leniency to avoid scandal and lawsuits from respondents.
The second is apparent bias: even if panel members are scrupulously fair, the structure gives reasonable observers grounds to doubt it. In English law, the test for apparent bias asks whether a fair-minded and informed observer would conclude that there was a real possibility of bias. Apparent bias matters because legitimacy depends on public confidence as well as on correct outcomes.
The case that panels cannot be impartial
The strongest version of the critique holds that institutional interests are pervasive and point in conflicting directions depending on circumstances. In one era, federal enforcement and campus activism may create pressure to find against respondents. In another, lawsuits by respondents and political attention to due process may create pressure the other way. Panel members do not need to be corrupt for these pressures to affect them; they need only be human. They know which outcomes will be praised and which criticised, and they know their employer’s interests.
Moreover, the institution controls the process: it trains the panel, writes the rules, selects the investigators and handles appeals. Unlike a court, there is no independent body standing apart from the parties.
The case that they can be
Defenders offer several responses.
First, every adjudicator is embedded in institutions with interests. Judges are employed by the state, which also prosecutes. Professional regulators judge members of the profession they regulate. We do not conclude that these bodies are inherently biased; we design safeguards.
Second, the university’s interests are not simply aligned with one side. It owes duties to both complainant and respondent, both of whom are its students. An institution that systematically favoured one side would face legal liability from the other. These cross-pressures may produce a kind of balance.
Third, training and procedural rules can reduce bias. The 2020 Title IX regulations, for example, required that decision-makers be free from conflicts of interest and bias, and trained on how to conduct impartial hearings.
Possible safeguards
If perfect independence is not possible, several measures can reduce the problem.
External adjudicators, such as retired judges or lawyers from outside the institution, could hear the most serious cases. Some universities already use them.
Separation of functions, so that investigators, decision-makers and appeal officers are different people, reduces the risk that one person’s view dominates.
Transparency about procedures and, within privacy limits, about outcomes allows scrutiny of patterns over time.
Independent review, for example by an ombudsman or external body, provides a check that internal appeals cannot.
A balanced view
A trained internal panel can be fair in many cases, and its members may be conscientious. But the structural conflict is real, and it is most dangerous in high-profile cases, where institutional stakes are highest. Those are precisely the cases where public confidence matters most, and where apparent bias can undermine any outcome, however carefully reached. The Cornell case, with its contested sanctions and a governor-ordered independent investigation, illustrates how quickly legitimacy can erode.
For discussion
Would you trust a panel of your own university’s staff to decide a case against you? Against someone you had accused? What single safeguard would most increase your confidence? And is it ever possible for an institution to judge a case in which its own reputation is at stake?