IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jlstud/v29y2000i2p711-19.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is the Ninth Circuit Too Large? A Statistical Study of Judicial Quality

Author

Listed:
  • Posner, Richard A

Abstract

This paper provides an empirical test of the claim that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has too many judges to be able to do a good job. Reversals (especially summary reversals) by the Supreme Court and citations are used as proxies for quality of judicial output. The overall conclusion is that (1) adding judgeships tends to reduce the quality of a court's output and (2) the Ninth Circuit's uniquely high rate of being summarily reversed by the Supreme Court (a) is probably not a statistical fluke and (b) may not be a product simply of that circuit's large number of judges. Copyright 2000 by the University of Chicago.

Suggested Citation

  • Posner, Richard A, 2000. "Is the Ninth Circuit Too Large? A Statistical Study of Judicial Quality," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(2), pages 711-719, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlstud:v:29:y:2000:i:2:p:711-19
    DOI: 10.1086/468090
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/468090
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/468090?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Silva, Maria Conceição A., 2018. "Output-specific inputs in DEA: An application to courts of justice in Portugal," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 43-53.
    2. Samantha Bielen & Wim Marneffe & Peter Grajzl & Valentina Dimitrova-Grajzl, 2018. "The Duration of Judicial Deliberation: Evidence from Belgium," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 174(2), pages 303-333, June.
    3. Dimitrova-Grajzl, Valentina & Grajzl, Peter & Slavov, Atanas & Zajc, Katarina, 2016. "Courts in a transition economy: Case disposition and the quantity–quality tradeoff in Bulgaria," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 18-38.
    4. Fauvrelle Thiago A. & Tony C Almeida Alessio, 2018. "Determinants of Judicial Efficiency Change: Evidence from Brazil," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 14(1), pages 1-36, March.
    5. Maria Conceição Portela, 2016. "Output-specific inputs in DEA: an application to courts," Working Papers de Gestão (Management Working Papers) 02, Católica Porto Business School, Universidade Católica Portuguesa.
    6. Peter Grajzl & Shikha Silwal, 2020. "The functioning of courts in a developing economy: evidence from Nepal," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 49(1), pages 101-129, February.
    7. Pushkar Maitra & Russell Smyth, 2004. "Judicial Independence, Judicial Promotion and the Enforcement of Legislative Wealth Transfers—An Empirical Study of the New Zealand High Court," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 209-235, March.
    8. Svetlana Avdasheva & Svetlana Golovanova & Elena Sidorova, 2022. "Does judicial effort matter for quality? Evidence from antitrust proceedings in Russian commercial courts," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 53(3), pages 425-450, June.
    9. Dimitrova-Grajzl, Valentina & Grajzl, Peter & Sustersic, Janez & Zajc, Katarina, 2012. "Court output, judicial staffing, and the demand for court services: Evidence from Slovenian courts of first instance," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 19-29.
    10. Moral, Alfonso & Rosales, Virginia & Martín-Román, Ángel, 2021. "Professional vs. non-professional labour judges: their impact on the quality of judicial decisions," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    11. Virginia Rosales-López, 2008. "Economics of court performance: an empirical analysis," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 231-251, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jlstud:v:29:y:2000:i:2:p:711-19. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLS .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.