IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jlstud/v30y2001i1p223-52.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Determinants of Judicial Prestige and Influence: Some Empirical Evidence from the High Court of Australia

Author

Listed:
  • Bhattacharya, Mita
  • Smyth, Russell

Abstract

This paper uses judicial citation practice to investigate the determinants of judicial influence in the High Court of Australia. First, we construct measures of influence based on the number of times a judge is cited by name in a sample of High Court decisions. The raw citation counts are adjusted to exclude self-citations, depreciation of legal capital, and variations in terms of period in office. Second, our measures of influence are regressed on a series of explanatory variables including age on appointment, appointing government, prior experience, and whether the judge served as chief justice, for each of the 35 retired judges of the High Court. They suggest that younger appointees with prior judicial experience exert more influence per year on the bench. Our results also suggest that conservative appointees exert more influence than Labor appointees and judges who have served as chief justice exert more, influence than puisne judges. Copyright 2001 by the University of Chicago.

Suggested Citation

  • Bhattacharya, Mita & Smyth, Russell, 2001. "The Determinants of Judicial Prestige and Influence: Some Empirical Evidence from the High Court of Australia," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(1), pages 223-252, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlstud:v:30:y:2001:i:1:p:223-52
    DOI: 10.1086/468117
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/468117
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/468117?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. Smyth, Russell & Bhattacharya, Mita, 2003. "How fast do old judges slow down?: A life cycle study of aging and productivity in the Federal Court of Australia," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 141-164, June.
    2. Gilat Levy, 2005. "Careerist Judges," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 36(2), pages 275-297, Summer.
    3. Martin Schneider, "undated". "Erfolgsmessung in Gerichten," German Working Papers in Law and Economics 2004-1-1103, Berkeley Electronic Press.
    4. Dimitrova-Grajzl Valentina & Grajzl Peter & Zajc Katarina & Sustersic Janez, 2012. "Judicial Incentives and Performance at Lower Courts: Evidence from Slovenian Judge-Level Data," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 215-252, August.
    5. John Szmer & Robert K. Christensen & Samuel Grubbs, 2020. "What influences the influence of U.S. Courts of Appeals decisions?," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 49(1), pages 55-81, February.
    6. Ramseyer, J. Mark, 2012. "Talent matters: Judicial productivity and speed in Japan," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 38-48.
    7. Stephen J. Choi & G. Mitu Gulati, 2008. "Bias in Judicial Citations: A Window into the Behavior of Judges?," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(1), pages 87-129, January.
    8. 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).

    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:30:y:2001:i:1:p:223-52. 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.