The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The Supply of Justice:The effect of Judgeship on Dispositions

Email address: msyoel@mscc.huji.ac.il

JEL Classifications: K4, D2

Abstract:
A key factor in planning the judicial system, and especially in planning the number of judges and their allocation among the different courts, is the effect of the number of judges on the output of the judicial system. Our central concern in this paper is with the effect of the number of judges on the output of the judiciary. In courts where bottlenecks are caused by the number of judges, one might expect, ceteris paribus, that the greater the number of judges, the greater should be the output of the judiciary, so that more cases are decided, resulting in reduced waiting times. In short, more judges should enable the system to handle more cases. Indeed, the policy decision to appoint judges is most probably motivated by the desire to ensure that the supply of judicial services matches the demand as measured by the flow of new cases and the number of pending cases. The Administrative Office of the United States Courts determines the number of judges, inter alia, by using the "input-output" coefficients for different cases. These coefficients express the amount of judge-time required to judge a case of a given type. Using projections of lodged cases by type, these coefficients may then be used to calculate the number of judges required to handle the projected caseload. We use panel data on Israeli courts to estimate the "production function" for case dispositions. Our results show that the number of case dispositions is independent of the number of serving judges, and that the "productivity", as measured by completed cases per judge, varies directly with the caseload per judge. These results suggest that the productivity of judges is endogenous: for the same caseload judges complete more cases under pressure, and complete less when additional judges are appointed,. They also suggest that the practice determining the number of judges by fixed "Leontieff" input-output coefficients is not appropriate

PDF file of paper: haitovsky.pdf

Session: Law and Economics

Time: Saturday, 7 July, 2:15pm - 3:45pm

Room: A