Managerial Judges

Resnik, Judith

doi:10.2307/1340797

Cited by 193 publications

(63 citation statements)

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“…3 In addition, concerns have been raised about the possible implications of such reforms on the substantive content of the law, namely, justice and deterrence. Settlement has been claimed to be normatively inferior to litigation (Fiss, 1984); managerial judging has been alleged to undermine inherent values of the judicial system (Resnik, 1982); and promotion of ADR has been questioned over its possible adverse effects on deterrence (Shavell, 1996;Hay 1997).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Against Compromise: A Mechanism Design Approach

Klement

Neeman

2005

Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization

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A risk-neutral plaintiff sues a risk-neutral defendant for damages that are normalized to one. The defendant knows whether she is liable or not, but the plaintiff does not. We ask what are the settlement procedures and fee-shifting rules (which, together, we call a mechanism) that minimize the rate of litigation subject to maintaining deterrence. Two main results are presented. The first is a characterization of an upper bound on the rate of settlement that is consistent with maintaining deterrence. This upper bound is shown to be independent of the litigants' litigation cost. It is shown that any mechanism that attains this bound must employ the English fee-shifting rule (according to which all litigation costs are shifted to the loser in the trial). The second result describes a simple practicable mechanism that attains this upper bound. We discuss our results in the context of recent legal reforms in the United States and United Kingdom.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Against Compromise: A Mechanism Design Approach

Klement

Neeman

2005

Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization

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“…4 Even a small degree of self interest on the part of the judges, therefore, can have an enormous impact on settlement rates above and beyond the more commonly considered factors, such as the degree of asymmetric information, the size of the trial awards, the magnitude of trial costs, discovery rules, etc. Furthermore, as we indicated above, higher settlement rates come with significant distributional implications, which is precisely the concern raised in Fiss (1984) and Resnik (1982). It might be true that legal disputes are resolved at lower cost when they are settled out of court, but the terms of the settlement usually favor the party with the informational advantage.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…One such implication is that out of court settlements further disadvantage the weak party in the dispute by forcing them to accept a settlement at unfavorable terms (see Resnik (1982) and Hadfield (2004)). Indeed, our results show that equilibria with higher settlement rates have both high settlement offers and trial awards, which hurts the uninformed defendant.…”

Section: Managerial Judges and The Social Desirability Of Settlementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…But there is also a drawback. 3 As Resnik (1982) pointed out, the "judges are acting more forcefully. [...] Some warn the parties that the judge would take a dim, and possibly hostile, view of either side's insistence on going to trial."…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…3 Resnik (1982) and Fiss (1984) are the two widely cited papers against this type of "managerialism." 4 See Farrell and Rabin (1996) on the credibility of pregame cheap-talk messages and a discussion of "self-signaling" and "self-committing."…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Litigation and settlement under judicial agency

Koçkesen

Usman

2012

International Review of Law and Economics

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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. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractWe model the settlement of a legal dispute when the trial outcome depends on the behavior of a strategically motivated judge. A defendant, who is uninformed about the level of harm that he has caused, makes a take-it-or-leave-it offer to an informed plaintiff. If the parties cannot agree on a settlement and the case goes to trial, the judge decides how much effort to exert in discovering the actual damages. We show that under very general assumptions this model exhibits multiple equilibria. In some equilibria, the judge exerts less effort and more cases settle out of court, whereas in others the opposite occurs. We also show that the judge prefers the low effort equilibria with high settlement rate and argue that a "managerial judge" could easily steer the parties towards low effort equilibria. This may be deemed undesirable since in low-effort equilibria, the terms of the settlement heavily favor the informed plaintiff, and this in turn induces over-investment in ex ante preventive care by the defendant.JEL Classification: K00, K41, D82, C78.

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Adversarial System of Justice

Wendel¹

2013

The International Encyclopedia of Ethics

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Managerial Judges

Cited by 193 publications

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Against Compromise: A Mechanism Design Approach

Against Compromise: A Mechanism Design Approach

Litigation and settlement under judicial agency

Adversarial System of Justice

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