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Delegation in a multi-tier court system: Are remands in the U.S. federal courts driven by moral hazard?

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  • Sarel, Roee
  • Demirtas, Melanie

Abstract

Appellate judges face a trade-off when deciding whether to remand cases: delegating the decision power enables to transfer effort costs to the lower court, but may be costly in terms of ideological preferences and reputation costs. Our empirical analysis of federal cases reveals that this trade-off creates a ‘Subsequent Remand Effect’: cases remanded by the Supreme Court to appellate courts are far more likely to be subsequently remanded to district courts, compared to other cases. This effect varies with judicial ideologies, suggesting that the tendency to (subsequently) remand might be driven by moral hazard problems rather than case-relevant attributes.

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  • Sarel, Roee & Demirtas, Melanie, 2021. "Delegation in a multi-tier court system: Are remands in the U.S. federal courts driven by moral hazard?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:poleco:v:68:y:2021:i:c:s0176268020301476
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2020.101999
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Remands; Federal courts; Appeals; Judicial ideology; Ideological distance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K41 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Litigation Process
    • D02 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact
    • P48 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Other Economic Systems - - - Legal Institutions; Property Rights; Natural Resources; Energy; Environment; Regional Studies

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