Is Sky the Limit? Revisiting ‘Exogenous Productivity of Judges’ Argument

Abstract

This paper revisits ‘exogenous productivity of judges’ hypothesis, laid down in numerous Law & Economics studies based on ‘production function’ approach. It states that judges confronted with growing caseload pressure, adjust their productivity thereby increasing number of resolved cases. We attribute such results to assumptions regarding the shape of court’s ‘production function’, and present alternative – hockey-stick ‘production function’ model, explicitly taking into account the time constraint faced by judges. Hence, we offer an attempt to reconcile ‘production function’ with more traditional approaches to the court performance – such as weighted caseload methods. We argue that such empirical strategy is particularly valuable in case of continental legal systems – characterized by higher procedural formalism. We also propose extended methodology of model evaluation, taking into account their ability to reproduce empirical regularities observed in ‘real world’ court systems.

Keywords

• court efficiency, caseload management, judicial productivity, production function,