IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/irlaec/v74y2023ics0144818822000783.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Judicial compliance in district courts

Author

Listed:
  • Chen, Daniel L.

Abstract

Are judges motivated only by policy preferences? Public enforcement of law relies on the use of public agents, such as judges, to follow the law. We use the random assignment of U.S. Federal judges setting geographically-local precedent to document the causal impact of court decisions in a hierarchical legal system. We examine lower court cases filed before and resolved after higher court decisions and find that lower courts are 29%–37% points more likely to rule in the manner of the higher court. The results obtain when the higher court case was decided in the same doctrinal area as the pending case and when the higher court case was decided on the merits. Reversals by the higher court have no significant effects. These results provide evidence that judges are motivated to follow the law and are not solely motivated by policy preferences.

Suggested Citation

  • Chen, Daniel L., 2023. "Judicial compliance in district courts," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:irlaec:v:74:y:2023:i:c:s0144818822000783
    DOI: 10.1016/j.irle.2022.106122
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0144818822000783
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.irle.2022.106122?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. Niblett, Anthony, 2013. "Tracking inconsistent judicial behavior," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 9-20.
    2. Frank Cross, 2005. "Appellate Court Adherence to Precedent," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 2(2), pages 369-405, July.
    3. Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer, 2007. "The Evolution of Common Law," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(1), pages 43-68.
    4. Chen, Daniel L. & Yeh, Susan, 2014. "The construction of morals," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 84-105.
    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. A. Colin Cameron & Douglas L. Miller, 2015. "A Practitioner’s Guide to Cluster-Robust Inference," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 50(2), pages 317-372.
    7. Matthew C. Stephenson, 2009. "Legal Realism for Economists," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 23(2), pages 191-211, Spring.
    8. Chen, Daniel L. & Moskowitz, Tobias J. & Shue, Kelly, 2016. "Decision-Making Under the Gambler’s Fallacy: Evidence From Asylum Courts, Loan Officers, and Baseball Umpires," IAST Working Papers 16-43, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    9. Daniel L. Chen, 2010. "Club Goods and Group Identity: Evidence from Islamic Resurgence during the Indonesian Financial Crisis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(2), pages 300-354, April.
    10. Anthony Niblett & Richard A. Posner & Andrei Shleifer, 2010. "The Evolution of a Legal Rule," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 39(2), pages 325-358.
    11. Christina L. Boyd & David A. Hoffman, 2013. "Litigating Toward Settlement," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 29(4), pages 898-929, August.
    12. Daniel L. Chen, 2015. "Can markets stimulate rights? On the alienability of legal claims," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 46(1), pages 23-65, March.
    13. Daniel L. Chen & Tobias J. Moskowitz & Kelly Shue, 2016. "Decision Making Under the Gambler’s Fallacy: Evidence from Asylum Judges, Loan Officers, and Baseball Umpires," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(3), pages 1181-1242.
    14. Carlos Berdejó & Daniel L. Chen, 2017. "Electoral Cycles among US Courts of Appeals Judges," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 60(3), pages 479-496.
    15. Eric Helland, 2019. "The Role of Ideology in Judicial Evaluations of Experts," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 62(4), pages 579-611.
    16. Gillian K. Hadfield, 2004. "Where Have All the Trials Gone? Settlements, Nontrial Adjudications, and Statistical Artifacts in the Changing Disposition of Federal Civil Cases," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 1(3), pages 705-734, November.
    17. Daniel L. Chen, 2020. "Gender Violence and the Price of Virginity: Theory and Evidence of Incomplete Marriage Contracts," Post-Print hal-03170620, HAL.
    18. Besley, Timothy & Case, Anne, 2000. "Unnatural Experiments? Estimating the Incidence of Endogenous Policies," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(467), pages 672-694, November.
    19. Joshua B. Fischman, 2015. "Do the Justices Vote Like Policy Makers? Evidence from Scaling the Supreme Court with Interest Groups," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(S1), pages 269-293.
    20. Michael D. Gilbert, 2011. "Does Law Matter? Theory and Evidence from Single-Subject Adjudication," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 40(2), pages 333-365.
    21. Daniel L. Chen & Vardges Levonyan & S. Eric Reinhart & Glen Taksler, 2019. "Mandatory Disclosure: Theory and Evidence from Industry-Physician Relationships," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 48(2), pages 409-440.
    22. Miceli, Thomas J. & Cosgel, Metin M., 1994. "Reputation and judicial decision-making," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 31-51, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. & Frankenreiter, Jens & Yeh, Susan, 2016. "Judicial Compliance in District Courts," IAST Working Papers 16-55, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    2. 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).
    3. Bielen, Samantha & Grajzl, Peter & Marneffe, Wim, 2017. "Procedural events, judge characteristics, and the timing of settlement," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 97-110.
    4. Niblett, Anthony, 2013. "Tracking inconsistent judicial behavior," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 9-20.
    5. Samantha Bielen & Peter Grajzl & Wim Marneffe, 2017. "Understanding the Time to Court Case Resolution: A Competing Risks Analysis Using Belgian Data," CESifo Working Paper Series 6450, CESifo.
    6. Chen, Daniel L. & Philippe, Arnaud, 2023. "Clash of norms judicial leniency on defendant birthdays," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 324-344.
    7. Nicola Gennaioli & Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto, 2015. "Optimally vague contracts and the law," Economics Working Papers 1410, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Jan 2017.
    8. Miceli, Thomas J., 2010. "Legal change and the social value of lawsuits," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 203-208, September.
    9. Álvaro Bustos & Pablo Bravo-Hurtado & Antonio Aninat, 2020. "The (Other) Effects of Restricting Access to Higher Courts: The Case of Wrongful Terminations in Labor Contracts in Chile," Documentos de Trabajo 534, Instituto de Economia. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile..
    10. Chen, Daniel L. & Halberstam, Yosh & Yu, Alan, 2016. "Covering: Mutable Characteristics and Perceptions of (Masculine) Voice in the U.S. Supreme Court," IAST Working Papers 16-38, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST), revised Feb 2020.
    11. Elliott Ash & Daniel L. Chen & Suresh Naidu, 2022. "Ideas Have Consequences : The Impact of Law and Economics on American Justice," Working Papers hal-03899739, HAL.
    12. 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.
    13. Nicolas Lampach & Arthur Dyevre, 2020. "Choosing for Europe: judicial incentives and legal integration in the European Union," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 65-86, August.
    14. Ash, Elliott & MacLeod, W. Bentley, 2021. "Reducing partisanship in judicial elections can improve judge quality: Evidence from U.S. state supreme courts," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 201(C).
    15. Chen, Daniel L., 2016. "Mood and the Malleability of Moral Reasoning," TSE Working Papers 16-707, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Feb 2017.
    16. Robin Christmann, 2014. "No Judge, No Job! Court errors and the contingent labor contract," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 38(3), pages 409-429, December.
    17. Álvaro Bustos, 2020. "How Does Court Stability Affect Legal Stability?," Documentos de Trabajo 535, Instituto de Economia. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile..
    18. Chen, Daniel L. & Loecher, Markus, 2016. "Mood and the Malleability of Moral Reasoning: The Impact of Irrelevant Factors on Judicial Decisions," IAST Working Papers 16-49, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST), revised Sep 2019.
    19. Jo Thori Lind & Daniel Chen, 2016. "The Political Economy Of Beliefs: Why Fiscal And Social Conservatives/Liberals Come Hand-In-Hand," 2016 Meeting Papers 606, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    20. Chen, Daniel L. & Prescott, J.J., 2016. "Implicit Egoism in Sentencing Decisions: First Letter Name Effects with Randomly Assigned Defendants," IAST Working Papers 16-56, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).

    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:eee:irlaec:v:74:y:2023:i:c:s0144818822000783. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/irle .

    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.