IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iaa/wpaper/200202.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Judicial Lawmaking in a Civil Law System: Evidence from German Labor Courts of Appeal

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Schneider

    (Institute for Labour Law and Industrial Relations in the EC, University of Trier)

Abstract

According to economic analysis, common-law courts resolve individual legal disputes and create new, judge-made law. In this article, I study both functions in a civil-law context by analyzing data for nine German labor courts of appeal (Landesarbeitsgerichte) in the period 1980-1996. Output of these courts is measured by the number of resolved cases, settlements, and published opinions. Performance in each of these measures depends on judges’ incentives and external factors, as behavioral production functions reveal: Firstly, output varies with judicial experience in a manner that suggests an impact of career concerns on effort and performance. Secondly, more change on the labor market gives rise to new legal problems and, therefore, leads to a larger number of published opinions. Since these are a proxy for judicial lawmaking, this finding suggests that judge-made law is an important ingredient of German labor law: It clarifies statutes and updates previous court opinions.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Schneider, 2002. "Judicial Lawmaking in a Civil Law System: Evidence from German Labor Courts of Appeal," IAAEG Discussion Papers until 2011 200202, Institute of Labour Law and Industrial Relations in the European Union (IAAEU).
    • Handle: RePEc:iaa:wpaper:200202
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.iaaeg.de/images/DiscussionPaper/2002_02.pdf
    File Function: Revised version, 2002
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Isaac Ehrlich & Richard A. Posner, 1974. "An Economic Analysis of Legal Rulemaking," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(1), pages 257-286, January.
    2. William M. Landes & Richard A. Posner, 1978. "Adjudication as a Private Good," NBER Working Papers 0263, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Ogus, Anthony, 1992. "Information, error costs and regulation," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 411-421, December.
    4. Cohen, Mark A, 1991. "Explaining Judicial Behavior or What's "Unconstitutional" about the Sentencing Commission?," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(1), pages 183-199, Spring.
    5. Cohen, Mark A., 1992. "The motives of judges: Empirical evidence from antitrust sentencing," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 13-30, March.
    6. Ramseyer, J Mark & Rasmusen, Eric B, 1997. "Judicial Independence in a Civil Law Regime: The Evidence from Japan," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 13(2), pages 259-286, October.
    7. Landes, William M & Posner, Richard A, 1976. "Legal Precedent: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(2), pages 249-307, August.
    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. Admore Myambo & Takawira Munyanyi, 2017. "Effecetiveness of Labour Court in Labour Dispute Management in Zimbabwe," International Journal of Social and Administrative Sciences, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 2(1), pages 15-30, June.

    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. 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.
    2. Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci & Bruno Deffains, 2007. "Uncertainty of Law and the Legal Process," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 163(4), pages 627-656, December.
    3. 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.
    4. Bruno Deffains & Marie Obidzinski, 2009. "Real Options Theory for Law Makers," Recherches économiques de Louvain, De Boeck Université, vol. 75(1), pages 93-117.
    5. Alessandro Melcarne, 2017. "Careerism and judicial behavior," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 44(2), pages 241-264, October.
    6. Tom Campbell & Nathaniel T. Wilcox, 2020. "Younger Federal District Court Judges Favor Presidential Power," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63(1), pages 181-202.
    7. 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.
    8. 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.
    9. J. Mark Ramseyer & Eric B. Rasmusen, 2001. "When are Judges and Bureaucrats Left Independent? Theory and History from Imperial Japan, Postwar Japan, and the United States," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-126, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    10. Arndt Christiansen & Wolfgang Kerber, 2006. "Competition Policy With Optimally Differentiated Rules Instead Of “Per Se Rules Vs Rule Of Reason”," Journal of Competition Law and Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 2(2), pages 215-244.
    11. 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.
    12. Daniel P. Kessler & Daniel L. Rubinfeld, 2004. "Empirical Study of the Civil Justice System," NBER Working Papers 10825, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. 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).
    14. Barbara Luppi & Francesco Parisi, 2012. "Litigation and legal evolution: does procedure matter?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 152(1), pages 181-201, July.
    15. Scott S. Boddery, 2019. "Signals from a politicized bar: the solicitor general as a direct litigant before the U.S. Supreme Court," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 30(2), pages 194-210, June.
    16. Padovano, Fabio & Fiorino, Nadia, 2012. "Strategic delegation and “judicial couples” in the Italian Constitutional Court," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 215-223.
    17. Roussey, Ludivine & Soubeyran, Raphael, 2018. "Overburdened judges," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 21-32.
    18. Marselli, Riccardo & McCannon, Bryan C. & Vannini, Marco, 2015. "Bargaining in the shadow of arbitration," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 356-368.
    19. Magnus Söderberg, 2008. "Uncertainty and regulatory outcome in the Swedish electricity distribution sector," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 79-94, February.
    20. Pablo T. Spiller, 2003. "The Institutional Foundations of Public Policy: A Transactions Approach with Application to Argentina," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 19(2), pages 281-306, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    courts; internal labour markets; professionals; behavioural production functions; career concerns;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J45 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Public Sector Labor Markets
    • K31 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Labor Law
    • M12 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Personnel Management; Executives; Executive Compensation

    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:iaa:wpaper:200202. 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: Adrian Chadi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iaaegde.html .

    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.