Does the appointment of judges increase the output of the judiciary?

Beenstock, Michael; Haitovsky, Yoel

doi:10.1016/j.irle.2004.10.006

Cited by 109 publications

(111 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Empirical literature, however, casts doubt on whether court effectiveness can indeed be increased through an increase in court resources (Botero et al 2003). Beenstock and Haitovsky (2004) and Dimitrova-Grajzl et al (2012a), for example, do not find a statistically significant effect of judicial staffing on court output in Israel and Slovenia, respectively. A plausible explanation for the lack of a positive effect of judicial staffing is that judicial productivity is endogenous and, hence, that existing judges prefer to reduce their productivity in light of new appointments (Beenstock and Haitovsky 2004: 366).…”

Section: The Determinants Of Court Output: Conceptual Framework and Ementioning

confidence: 87%

“…When court output is low, it is likely that new judges will be appointed in order to reduce backlogs and delays (de Figueiredo and Tiller 1996: 440). Judicial staffing at courts is thus often a direct response to the observed case disposition record (Beenstock and Haitovsky 2004, de Figueiredo et al 2000, Dimitrova-Grajzl et al 2012a. In Bulgaria, the authority over judicial staffing resides with the Supreme Judicial Council (see Section 2.1).…”

Section: The Determinants Of Court Output: Conceptual Framework and Ementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Section 5, we focus only on judicial effectiveness as measured by the ability of the judges and 14 the court system to resolve cases (see, e.g., Beenstock and Haitovsky 2004, Rosales-Lopez 2008, Chemin 2009, Choi et al 2009a, 2009b, 2011aRamseyer 2012, Dimitrova-Grajzl et al 2012a.…”

Section: Outcome Variablementioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, we add to the growing empirical law and economics literature on the activity of courts. Within this literature, relatively few studies have been able to draw on original court-based data from judicial systems outside of the U.S. or the common law world (see, e.g., Beenstock and Haitovsky 2004, Mitsopoulos and Pelagidis 2007, Rosales-Lopez 2008, Schneider 2005Di Vita 2012aElbialy and GarciaRubio 2011, Finocchario Castro and Guccio 2014, Santos and Amado 2014, Falavigna et al 2015. Our analysis of Bulgarian courts contributes to the literature by shedding light on the functioning of the judicial system in the understudied post-socialist region.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…In contrast, the number of judges as a key court resource is statistically significantly associated with court output only in small district courts, in which output responds positively but inelastically to the number of serving judges. These findings suggest, first, that judges tend to adjust their productivity depending on the number of judges at a court (see, e.g., Beenstock and Haitovsky 2004) and, second, that an increase in the size of the judiciary would be limitedly effective at increasing court output, and thus further reducing case disposition times, only in a subset of Bulgarian courts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

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Courts in a transition economy: Case disposition and the quantity–quality tradeoff in Bulgaria

et al. 2016

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The lack of effective judiciary in post-socialist countries has been a pervasive concern and successful judicial reform an elusive goal. Yet to date, little empirical research exists on the functioning of courts in the post-socialist world. We draw on a new court-level panel dataset from Bulgaria to study the determinants of court case disposition and to evaluate whether judicial decision-making is subject to a quantity-quality tradeoff. Addressing endogeneity concerns, we find that case disposition in Bulgarian courts is largely driven by demand for court services. The number of serving judges, a key court resource, matters to a limited extent only in a subsample of courts, a result suggesting that judges adjust their productivity based on the number of judges serving at a court. We do not find evidence implying that increasing court productivity would decrease adjudicatory quality. We discuss the policy implications of our findings. Terms of use: Documents inJEL-Code: P370, K400, D020.

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Section: The Determinants Of Court Output: Conceptual Framework and Ementioning

confidence: 87%

Section: The Determinants Of Court Output: Conceptual Framework and Ementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Outcome Variablementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

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Courts in a transition economy: Case disposition and the quantity–quality tradeoff in Bulgaria

et al. 2016

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Justice in time: A theory of constraints approach

Azaria

Ronen

Shamir

2023

J of Ops Management

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If there is some truth to the adage that justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done, then surely it must be seen to be done in a timely manner. Yet court congestion and delays – which threaten to undermine the justice system – have become global phenomena with significant adverse implications for social welfare, economic development, and civil rights. This work describes an application of the Theory of Constraints (TOC) to the judicial system for the purpose of designing an intervention to alleviate court congestion – an intervention that won the 2012 Goldratt Foundation New Knowledge Award. In cooperation with the Jerusalem District Court in Israel, the judicial process was reviewed through the lens of TOC, and a set of operational changes was implemented to reduce case processing time. Data collected before and after this intervention indicate the potential of achieving lead‐time reduction by applying TOC to judicial environments.

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Data envelopment analysis to investigate the Italian legal system and its reform

Falavigna

Ippoliti

2023

Journal of Public Affairs

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This work investigates the Italian judicial system and discusses the designing of a policy reform to boost the efficiency of courts, considering the human resources available as well as the expenditure generated by the process to deliver justice. The authors present the benchmarks and shed light on how policy makers embarking on such a process of reform may be misled by inappropriate model definition. In detail, the authors propose a comparative analysis of technical efficiency (TE) scores computed using data envelopment analysis, adopting the same output (number of settled cases) and two alternative sets of inputs (judicial expenditure and human resources). According to the results, without considering the information extracted from the two complementary benchmark analyses, policy makers might be misled in the reform process. Regarding the elements that affect the performance of courts, it may be possible to improve the efficiency of judicial districts by working on judicial procedures. Hence, these are the domains where interventions by policy makers may prove successful. As for policy implications, the models and benchmarks presented here could be used to devise a reform of the judicial system aimed at enhancing its TE, while also keeping public expenditure under control.

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Does the appointment of judges increase the output of the judiciary?

Cited by 109 publications

References 12 publications

Courts in a transition economy: Case disposition and the quantity–quality tradeoff in Bulgaria

Courts in a transition economy: Case disposition and the quantity–quality tradeoff in Bulgaria

Justice in time: A theory of constraints approach

Data envelopment analysis to investigate the Italian legal system and its reform

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