IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jleorg/v32y2016i1p94-118..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Trial and Error: Decision Reversal and Panel Size in State Courts

Author

Listed:
  • Yosh Halberstam

Abstract

Using cross-state and within-court variation, I show that lower court decisions are reversed more frequently by larger, rather than smaller, panels of high court judges. Overall, conditional on being reviewed, the probability that a case is reversed by a high court judicial panel is less than one half. To understand these findings, I develop a simple framework that connects reversals and panel size with the extent to which judicial decision-making is congruent with the law. Assuming the high court rules correctly more often than not, my empirical results suggest that increasing judicial panel size erodes the quality of decision-making in high courts. These results are consistent with a large literature investigating small group size effects on productivity and output. (JEL D02, D71, H41, K40)

Suggested Citation

  • Yosh Halberstam, 2016. "Trial and Error: Decision Reversal and Panel Size in State Courts," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 32(1), pages 94-118.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:32:y:2016:i:1:p:94-118.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jleo/ewv007
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    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. Dove, John A., 2018. "It's easier to contract than to pay: Judicial independence and US municipal default in the 19th century," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 1062-1081.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D02 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact
    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • K40 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - General

    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:oup:jleorg:v:32:y:2016:i:1:p:94-118.. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jleo .

    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.