In this paper the extent to which the response of a linear cochlear model has the “minimum-phase” property is discussed, along with the topic of what it should mean when experiments confirm or deny the validity of minimum-phase in the response of the actual cochlea. This paper shows that short-wave, long-wave and three-dimensional cochlear models of the “classical” type, in which the operation of the cochlear partition is described by alocalfunction (namely, a driving-point impedance) that produces a cochlear map (from frequency to place), have a response that is minimum-phase, or very close to minimum-phase. Conversely, when the response is found to be non-minimum-phase, the best-fitting model cannot be a classical one.