Does judicial effort matter for quality? Evidence from antitrust proceedings in Russian commercial courts

Among the factors of court performance—a crucial element of the institutional environment for a well-functioning market economy—productivity (disposition time) and adjudicatory quality (minimum legal errors) are significant. This paper investigates presumed quantity-quality tradeoff in Russian commercial courts when considering claims to annul administrative infringement decisions, on the example of antitrust cases. Using a dataset of the first instance court decisions regarding claims to annul decisions of Russian competition authority during 2008–2015, we explore the influence of extra efforts by a judge to assess the evidence on the probability of appealing and annulling her decision. The effect is not found to be statistically significant which means the absence of adjudicatory quantity-quality tradeoff. We discuss then the implications of the finding to the rules for additional evidence presented in the courts when considering a case. We conclude, first, that in Russia the rules on reasonable disposition time and the motivation of judges to prevent backlog do not increase the probability of legal errors. Second, new evidence acquired during judicial review does not statistically improve the legal quality of court decisions. The policy implication is that the recent initiative of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation to limit additional evidence when considering claims to annul administrative antitrust decisions is reasonable.