IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/empleg/v6y2009i1p1-34.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Congressional Mobilization of Private Litigants: Evidence from the Civil Rights Act of 1991

Author

Listed:
  • Sean Farhang

Abstract

Levels of private litigation enforcing statutes are critically determined by legislative choice. I set out a theoretical framework for understanding how legislators purposefully influence the potential economic value of statutory claims, thereby establishing a market for enforcement consistent with legislative preferences. To test the theory, I examine the effects of the Civil Rights Act (CRA) of 1991, which increased the value of employment discrimination claims under the CRA of 1964, and find that the law increased the number of claims filed. The origins and legislative history of the law also reveal that Congress utilized economic incentives as a policy instrument to purposefully increase private litigation, with a high degree of self‐consciousness, in the course of conflict with other political actors over control of civil rights policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Sean Farhang, 2009. "Congressional Mobilization of Private Litigants: Evidence from the Civil Rights Act of 1991," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 6(1), pages 1-34, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:empleg:v:6:y:2009:i:1:p:1-34
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1740-1461.2009.01136.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-1461.2009.01136.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1740-1461.2009.01136.x?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. McCarty, Nolan M & Poole, Keith T, 1995. "Veto Power and Legislation: An Empirical Analysis of Executive and Legislative Bargaining from 1961 to 1986," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 11(2), pages 282-312, October.
    2. Aurelio Tobias & Michael J. Campbell, 1999. "Time series regression for counts allowing for autocorrelation," Stata Technical Bulletin, StataCorp LP, vol. 8(46).
    3. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    4. Ashenfelter, Orley & Eisenberg, Theodore & Schwab, Stewart J, 1995. "Politics and the Judiciary: The Influence of Judicial Background on Case Outcomes," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(2), pages 257-281, June.
    5. George L. Priest & Benjamin Klein, 1984. "The Selection of Disputes for Litigation," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 13(1), pages 1-56, January.
    6. McCubbins, Mathew D & Noll, Roger G & Weingast, Barry R, 1987. "Administrative Procedures as Instruments of Political Control," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 3(2), pages 243-277, Fall.
    7. Sean Farhang, 2004. "Institutional Dynamics on the U.S. Court of Appeals: Minority Representation Under Panel Decision Making," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 20(2), pages 299-330, October.
    8. Kornhauser, Lewis A & Revesz, Richard L, 1994. "Multidefendant Settlements: The Impact of Joint and Several Liability," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 23(1), pages 41-76, January.
    9. Giles, Micheal W. & Lancaster, Thomas D., 1989. "Political Transition, Social Development, and Legal Mobilization in Spain," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 83(3), pages 817-833, September.
    10. Sean Farhang, 2008. "Public Regulation and Private Lawsuits in the American Separation of Powers System," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(4), pages 821-839, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Virginia Rosales & Dolores Jiménez-Rubio, 2017. "Empirical analysis of civil litigation determinants: The Case of Spain," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 44(2), pages 321-338, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chen, Daniel L. & Levonyan, Vardges & Yeh, Susan, 2016. "Policies Affect Preferences: Evidence from Random Variation in Abortion Jurisprudence," IAST Working Papers 16-58, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    2. Freyens, Benoit Pierre & Gong, Xiaodong, 2017. "Judicial decision making under changing legal standards: The case of dismissal arbitration," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 108-126.
    3. Freyens, Benoit Pierre & Gong, Xiaodong, 2020. "Judicial arbitration of unfair dismissal cases: The role of peer effects," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    4. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    5. Richard T. Boylan, 2012. "The Effect of Punishment Severity on Plea Bargaining," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(3), pages 565-591.
    6. McMurray, Joseph, 2022. "Polarization and pandering in common-interest elections," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 150-161.
    7. Michael R. Baye & Joshua D. Wright, 2011. "Is Antitrust Too Complicated for Generalist Judges? The Impact of Economic Complexity and Judicial Training on Appeals," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(1), pages 1-24.
    8. Sean Farhang, 2008. "Public Regulation and Private Lawsuits in the American Separation of Powers System," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(4), pages 821-839, October.
    9. P. Hägg, 1997. "Theories on the Economics of Regulation: A Survey of the Literature from a European Perspective," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 4(4), pages 337-370, December.
    10. Claudine Desrieux & Romain Espinosa, 2019. "Case selection and judicial decision-making: evidence from French labor courts," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 47(1), pages 57-88, February.
    11. Chen, Daniel L. & Sethi, Jasmin, 2016. "Insiders, Outsiders, and Involuntary Unemployment: Sexual Harrassment Exacerbates Gender Inequality," IAST Working Papers 16-44, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    12. Moser, Peter, 1999. "The impact of legislative institutions on public policy: a survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 1-33, March.
    13. Fiorino, Nadia & Gavoille, Nicolas & Padovano, Fabio, 2015. "Rewarding judicial independence: Evidence from the Italian Constitutional Court," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 56-66.
    14. Fiorino, Nadia & Gavoille, Nicolas & Padovano, Fabio, 2015. "Rewarding judicial independence: Evidence from the Italian Constitutional Court," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 56-66.
    15. Daniel P. Kessler & Daniel L. Rubinfeld, 2004. "Empirical Study of the Civil Justice System," NBER Working Papers 10825, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Susanne Lohmann, 2003. "Representative Government and Special Interest Politics," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 15(3), pages 299-319, July.
    17. Patty, John & Turner, Ian R, 2024. "Strange Bedfellows: How the Need for Good Governance Shapes Budgetary Control of Bureaucracy," OSF Preprints pnx2u, Center for Open Science.
    18. Li-Ju Chen, 2021. "Female policymakers and educational expenditures: cross-country evidence," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 51(1), pages 129-155, February.
    19. Denise M. Keele & Robert W. Malmsheimer & Donald W. Floyd & Lianjun Zhang, 2009. "An Analysis of Ideological Effects in Published Versus Unpublished Judicial Opinions," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 6(1), pages 213-239, March.
    20. Jacobi, Tonja & Kontorovich, Eugene, 2015. "Why judges always vote," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 190-199.

    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:wly:empleg:v:6:y:2009:i:1:p:1-34. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1740-1461 .

    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.