What is JUSTFAIR?

The Supreme Court’s decision in Richmond Newspapers v. Virginia established that U.S. criminal courtrooms are constitutionally open to the public, theoretically allowing insight into individual judges’ sentencing decisions. However, the government’s public-facing sentencing data does not disclose the identity of presiding judges, creating a gap in transparency around judicial accountability. The JUdicial System Transparency for Fairness through Archived Inferred Records (JUSTFAIR) Project actively works to address this gap by making public data accessible, and holding the judicial system to its ideals of transparency and accountability. The data collected through JUSTFAIR enable the first analysis of sentencing patterns by appointing a president, demonstrating how presidential judicial philosophies influence sentencing practices and potential racial biases exhibited under each administration.

JUSTFAIR Database and Research

In 2020, JUSTFAIR created the first database of criminal sentencing decisions made in federal district courts, that identifies sentencing judges. This dataset was compiled from public sources including the United States Sentencing Commission, the Federal Judicial Center, the Public Access to Court Electronic Records system, and Wikipedia. With nearly 600,000 records from the years 2001—2018, JUSTFAIR is the first large scale, free, public database that links information about defendants and their demographic characteristics with information about their federal crimes, their sentences, and, crucially, the identity of the sentencing judge.

1. JUSTFAIR Dataset
2. Data-paper: JUSTFAIR: Judicial System Transparency through Federal Archive Inferred Records
3. Research-paper: Racial Disparities in Criminal Sentencing Vary Considerably across Federal Judges
4. Visualization: JUDGEFAIR

In 2025, QSIDE updated this database to include records up to and including the year 2023. Presidentially-appointed federal district court judges exercise broad discretion in determining criminal sentences, directly affecting individuals and communities in the United States. Against a backdrop of longstanding ethnoracial inequities in our courts, the judiciary’s practice of redacting judge names from public data obstructs analysis of individual judges and groups, leaving key questions about these inequities unanswered. 

To overcome this barrier, QSIDE reconstructed judge identifiers for over 137,000 federal sentences (2018–2023), creating the first dataset to include Trump appointees’ sentencing records. We use this data to examine the relationships between presidential appointment, defendant race/ethnicity, and judicial discretion. Our research finds Trump appointees are the least likely to grant leniency across ethnoracial groups, and ethnoracial disparities vary substantially among presidential cohorts in ways that can transcend political party. These findings highlight the importance of transparency and reform to ensure equal justice.

1. JUSTFAIR Dataset
2. Study: Presidential Appointments, Sentencing Discretion, and Ethnoracial Disparities in U.S. Federal Courts

JUSTFAIR State Lab 

While the JUSTFAIR Database currently includes data only on district judges, the QSIDE community has been working since 2018 to collect data on federal judges across the United States. Beginning with Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, the JUSTFAIR State Lab later expanded to include Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Montana, and North Carolina. Although the lab officially disbanded in 2025, the work continues as we refine our methodology and modeling to explore sentencing behaviors at the state level, where the vast majority of sentencing decisions still occur. The JUSTFAIR Database currently includes data on federal district court judges. In the future, we plan to expand our efforts to state court systems, where the vast majority of sentencing decisions occur, ensuring that all 50 states are held to the same standards of transparency and accountability.