IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/rlecon/v8y2012i1n6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Inquisitor Judge's Trilemma

Author

Listed:
  • Nakao Keisuke

    (University of Hawaii at Hilo)

  • Tsumagari Masatoshi

    (Keio University)

Abstract

We address the long-standing judicial debate over inquisitorial and adversarial procedures in criminal trials, focusing on the incentives to collect evidence of a defendant ’s guilt or innocence. We demonstrate three shortcomings of the former procedure: (i) a judge may suffer a trilemma, or a quandary among three tasks she confronts, i.e., an incentive scheme to improve the performance of one task impairs the performance of one or two of the others; (ii) it underperforms the latter procedure in collecting evidence at cost if private interests in winning a suit are more motivating than the public interests in avoiding erroneous judgments; (iii) incentive arrangements are so constrained that it may be impossible to induce high efforts of investigation. However, shortcoming (ii ) might be negated when private interests lead adversely to obscuring, rather than revealing evidence.

Suggested Citation

  • Nakao Keisuke & Tsumagari Masatoshi, 2012. "The Inquisitor Judge's Trilemma," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 137-159, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:rlecon:v:8:y:2012:i:1:n:6
    DOI: 10.1515/1555-5879.1593
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/1555-5879.1593
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/1555-5879.1593?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.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Froeb, Luke M. & Kobayashi, Bruce H., 2001. "Evidence production in adversarial vs. inquisitorial regimes," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 267-272, February.
    2. Daniel F. Rubinfeld & Suzanne Scotchmer, 1993. "Contingent Fees for Attorneys: An Economic Analysis," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 24(3), pages 343-356, Autumn.
    3. Leshem Shmuel, 2009. "Contingent Fees, Signaling and Settlement Authority," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 435-460, June.
    4. Hyun Song Shin, 1998. "Adversarial and Inquisitorial Procedures in Arbitration," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 29(2), pages 378-405, Summer.
    5. Palumbo, Giuliana, 2001. "Trial procedures and optimal limits on proof-taking10," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 309-327, September.
    6. Claude Fluet, 2009. "Accuracy Versus Falsification Costs: The Optimal Amount of Evidence under Different Procedures," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 25(1), pages 134-156, May.
    7. Parisi, Francesco, 2002. "Rent-seeking through litigation: adversarial and inquisitorial systems compared," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 193-216, August.
    8. Feddersen, Timothy & Pesendorfer, Wolfgang, 1998. "Convicting the Innocent: The Inferiority of Unanimous Jury Verdicts under Strategic Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 92(1), pages 23-35, March.
    9. Polinsky, A Mitchell & Shavell, Steven, 1989. "Legal Error, Litigation, and the Incentive to Obey the Law," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 5(1), pages 99-108, Spring.
    10. Kaplow, Louis, 1994. "The Value of Accuracy in Adjudication: An Economic Analysis," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 23(1), pages 307-401, January.
    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. Nakao Keisuke & Tsumagari Masatoshi, 2012. "Discretionary vs. Mandatory Prosecution: A Game-Theoretic Approach to Comparative Criminal Procedure," Asian Journal of Law and Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 1-14, 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. Fluet, Claude, 2020. "L'économie de la preuve judiciaire," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 96(4), pages 585-620, Décembre.
    2. Kim, Chulyoung, 2015. "Centralized vs. Decentralized Institutions for Expert Testimony," MPRA Paper 69618, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Winand Emons & Claude Fluet, 2020. "Adversarial versus Inquisitorial Testimony," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 71(3), pages 429-457.
    4. Alice Guerra & Maria Maraki & Baptiste Massenot & Christian Thöni, 2023. "Deterrence, settlement, and litigation under adversarial versus inquisitorial systems," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 196(3), pages 331-356, September.
    5. Matteo Rizzolli & Margherita Saraceno, 2013. "Better that ten guilty persons escape: punishment costs explain the standard of evidence," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 155(3), pages 395-411, June.
    6. Chulyoung Kim, 2014. "Adversarial and Inquisitorial Procedures with Information Acquisition," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 30(4), pages 767-803.
    7. Claude Fluet, 2009. "Accuracy Versus Falsification Costs: The Optimal Amount of Evidence under Different Procedures," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 25(1), pages 134-156, May.
    8. Yves Oytana & Nathalie Chappe, 2018. "Expert opinion in a tort litigation game," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 67-107, August.
    9. Winand Emons & Claude Fluet, 2005. "The Optimal Amount of Falsified Testimony," Cahiers de recherche 0520, CIRPEE.
    10. Dominique Demougin & Claude Fluet, 2008. "Rules of proof, courts, and incentives," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(1), pages 20-40, March.
    11. Chulyoung Kim & Paul S. Koh, 2020. "Court‐appointed experts and accuracy in adversarial litigation," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 16(3), pages 282-305, September.
    12. Luke M. Froeb & Bernhard Ganglmair & Steven Tschantz, 2016. "Adversarial Decision Making: Choosing between Models Constructed by Interested Parties," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(3), pages 527-548.
    13. Hadfield, Gillian K., 2008. "The levers of legal design: Institutional determinants of the quality of law," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 43-73, March.
    14. Massenot, Baptiste, 2011. "Financial development in adversarial and inquisitorial legal systems," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 602-608.
    15. Garoupa, Nuno, 2009. "Some reflections on the economics of prosecutors: Mandatory vs. selective prosecution," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 25-28, March.
    16. Chulyoung Kim, 2017. "An economic rationale for dismissing low-quality experts in trial," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 64(5), pages 445-466, November.
    17. Farmer Amy & Pecorino Paul, 2016. "Litigation with a Variable Cost of Trial," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(2), pages 203-226, July.
    18. Robin Christmann, 2023. "Plea bargaining and investigation effort: inquisitorial criminal procedure as a three-player game," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 56(3), pages 497-532, December.
    19. Vaccari, Federico, 2023. "Competition in costly talk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    20. Winand Emons & Claude Fluet, 2019. "Strategic communication with reporting costs," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 87(3), pages 341-363, October.

    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:bpj:rlecon:v:8:y:2012:i:1:n:6. 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: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    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.