On the need for reform of the Portuguese judicial system – Does Data Envelopment Analysis assessment support it?

Abstract

The Portuguese judicial system has attracted considerable criticism in recent years and demands for reforms have gained prominence. By using the Data Envelopment Analysis technique and focusing on the performance of 223 Portuguese first instance courts during the period of 2007 to 2011, this research has found evidence that supports some of this criticism and justifies the calls for reforms, better performance and accountability of the judicial system. In particular, our results found a sector with considerable scope for improvement with less than 16 percent of the 223 courts analysed making an efficient use of their resources in each year and with only one third of the courts being considered efficient in at least one of the five years assessed. Whilst the results suggest that improvement can be achieved with better case management, scale factors also seem to play an important role in explaining inefficiency, with most of the inefficient courts being smaller than optimal and with smaller courts being, on average, less efficient than larger ones. The existence of a statistically significant relationship between courts' efficiency and size was confirmed by the Mann-Whitney test. These results indicate considerable scope for improvement and that some of the planned reforms are timely and seem well targeted. However, the results also suggest that efficiency increases matching peers' best practices are not enough to sustainably reduce the prevailing judicial backlog and length of court proceedings in a considerable number of courts. Major changes in the capacity and/or functioning of the Portuguese judicial system might also be required.

Determinants of judicial efficiency: a survey

“…The input-output combinations used by each benchmark court or a combination of them can provide some guidance for the less efficient courts included in the analysis to identify their sources of inefficiency. These include, for example, Finocchiaro Castro and Guccio (2014), Santos and Amado (2014) as well as Falavigna et al (2015). Hollingsworth and Peacock (2008) reviewed 289 studies analyzing efficiency in the that sector, 48 % of which use DEA, while another 20 % use a 2 stage DEA, combining DEA with a regression model.…”

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

“…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.…”

A bootstrapped Malmquist index applied to Swedish district courts

“…In some studies, employees are measured as the number of judges (Falavigna et al 2017;Ferrandino 2014;Finocchiaro Castro and Guccio 2014). In other studies, the personnel are separated into judges and office staff (Major 2015;Santos and Amado 2014). The caseload of a court is another input included in some studies.…”

“…For example, a murder case would most likely require more resources than a traffic case. This heterogeneity within different categories of cases and matters is not taken into account in previous studies (Kittelsen and Førsund 1992;Santos and Amado 2014;Yeung and Azevedo 2011). To compensate for these facts, the outputs are weighted by the hearing time (i.e., the time in the courtroom).…”