IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jlawec/v42y1999i2p831-47.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Judicial Independence: Some Evidence from the English Court of Appeal

Author

Listed:
  • Salzberger, Eli
  • Fenn, Paul

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the existence or otherwise of conscious political interference with judicial decision taking. We produce new evidence from the English Court of Appeal to shed some light on the theoretical debate on judicial independence. This evidence rests on the fact that the procedure for promoting judges from the Court of Appeal to the House of Lords is in principle under political control: the lord chancellor, who has a key role in the promotion of judges, is a member of the cabinet and as such a political appointee. The data relate to public law decisions made by judges in the Court of Appeal over the period 1951-86. We use a competing risks survival model to establish whether the record of individual judges in deciding for or against the government was a factor that determined their promotion chances, controlling for the quality of their decision making. Copyright 1999 by the University of Chicago.

Suggested Citation

  • Salzberger, Eli & Fenn, Paul, 1999. "Judicial Independence: Some Evidence from the English Court of Appeal," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(2), pages 831-847, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlawec:v:42:y:1999:i:2:p:831-47
    DOI: 10.1086/467444
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/467444
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/467444?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.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ashenfelter, Orley & Eisenberg, Theodore & Schwab, Stewart J, 1995. "Politics and the Judiciary: The Influence of Judicial Background on Case Outcomes," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(2), pages 257-281, June.
    2. Landes, William M & Posner, Richard A, 1975. "The Independent Judiciary in an Interest-Group Perspective," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(3), pages 875-901, December.
    3. Salzberger, Eli M., 1993. "A positive analysis of the doctrine of separation of powers, or: Why do we have an independent judiciary?," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 349-379, December.
    4. Anderson, Gary M & Shughart, William F, II & Tollison, Robert D, 1989. "On the Incentives of Judges to Enforce Legislative Wealth Transfers," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(1), pages 215-228, April.
    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. Ioana Marinescu, 2011. "Are Judges Sensitive to Economic Conditions? Evidence from Uk Employment Tribunals," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 64(4), pages 673-698, July.
    2. Amaral-Garcia Sofia & Garoupa Nuno, 2017. "Judicial Behavior and Devolution at the Privy Council," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 13(3), pages 1-40, November.
    3. Gilat Levy, 2005. "Careerist Judges," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 36(2), pages 275-297, Summer.
    4. Christian Almer & Timo Goeschl, 2011. "The political economy of the environmental criminal justice system: a production function approach," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 148(3), pages 611-630, September.
    5. 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.
    6. Russell Smyth & Magnus Söderberg, 2010. "Public interest versus regulatory capture in the Swedish electricity market," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 38(3), pages 292-312, December.
    7. 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.
    8. 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.
    9. 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.
    10. Martin Schneider, 2005. "Judicial Career Incentives and Court Performance: An Empirical Study of the German Labour Courts of Appeal," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 127-144, September.
    11. Fabio Padovano, 2009. "The time-varying independence of Italian peak judicial institutions," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 230-250, September.
    12. Pablo T. Spiller & Sanny Liao, 2006. "Buy, Lobby or Sue: Interest Groups' Participation in Policy Making - A Selective Survey," NBER Working Papers 12209, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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. Timothy M. Shaughnessy, 2005. "A Preliminary Analysis of Campaign Contributions in Florida's Legislative and Judicial Elections," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 20(Spring 20), pages 43-67.
    2. Freyens, Benoit Pierre & Gong, Xiaodong, 2017. "Judicial decision making under changing legal standards: The case of dismissal arbitration," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 108-126.
    3. Cohen, Alon, 2014. "Independent judicial review: A blessing in disguise," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 209-220.
    4. Christian Almer & Timo Goeschl, 2011. "The political economy of the environmental criminal justice system: a production function approach," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 148(3), pages 611-630, September.
    5. 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.
    6. Freyens, Benoit Pierre & Gong, Xiaodong, 2015. "Dismissal Laws in Australia: Reforms and Enforcement by Labour Courts," IZA Discussion Papers 9295, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. 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.
    8. Richard Higgins & Arijit Mukherjee, 2010. "Deregulation redux: does mandating access to bottleneck facilities necessarily improve welfare?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 142(3), pages 363-377, March.
    9. Horst Feldmann, 2009. "The quality of the legal system and labor market performance around the world," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 39-65, August.
    10. Stefan Voigt, 2011. "Positive constitutional economics II—a survey of recent developments," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 146(1), pages 205-256, January.
    11. J. Mark Ramseyer & Eric B. Rasmusen, 1996. "Judicial Independence in Civil Law Regimes: Econometrics from Japan," Public Economics 9603001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Fabio Padovano & Grazia Sgarra & Nadia Fiorino, 2003. "Judicial Branch, Checks and Balances and Political Accountability," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 47-70, March.
    13. Daniel Sutter, 1995. "Constitutional politics within the interest-group model," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 6(2), pages 127-137, June.
    14. Gretchen Helmke & Elena V. McLean, 2014. "Inducing independence: A strategic model of World Bank assistance and legal reform," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 31(4), pages 383-405, September.
    15. Matthew C. Stephenson, 2003. "“When the Devil Turns … ”: The Political Foundations of Independent Judicial Review," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(1), pages 59-89, January.
    16. Bryan P. Cutsinger & Alexander Marsella & Yang Zhou, 2022. "Insuring legislative wealth transfers: theory and evidence," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 192(1), pages 127-144, July.
    17. Melcarne Alessandro & Ramello Giovanni B., 2015. "Judicial Independence, Judges’ Incentives and Efficiency," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 11(2), pages 149-169, July.
    18. 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.
    19. 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).
    20. Fabio Padovano, 2009. "The time-varying independence of Italian peak judicial institutions," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 230-250, September.

    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:jlawec:v:42:y:1999:i:2:p:831-47. 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: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLE .

    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.