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The Productivity of Judges in the Courts of Israel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Michael Beenstock
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Abstract

The output of Israel's judiciary, as measured by the number of completed cases, does not vary with judicial inputs, as measured by the number of judges. The appointment of additional judges lowers the caseload of existing judges, who respond by lowering their productivity. The percentage fall in productivity is equal to the percentage increase in the number of judges, implying that the output of the courts remains unchanged. This evidence undermines the conventional approach for determining the number of judges, which assumes that the productivity of judges does not depend upon their caseload.

Type
Applications of Social Science in the Law
Information
Israel Law Review , Volume 35 , Issue 2-3 , Summer-Autumn 2001 , pp. 249 - 265
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and The Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2001

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References

1 If the number of pending cases grows faster than the number of lodged cases, the delay increases.

2 Posner, R.A., The Federal Courts: Crisis and Reform (Harvard University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

3 Robel, L.K., “Caseload and Judging: Judicial Adaptations to Caseload,“ (1990) 1 Brigham Young University L. R. 3Google Scholar.

4 McCree, W.H., “Bureaucratic Justice: An Early Warning,” (1981) 129 University of Pennsylvania L. R. 777–797CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Gabrys, M.E., “A Shift in the Bottleneck: The Appellate Caseload Problem Twenty Years After the Creation of the Wisconsin Court of Appeal,” (1998) 6 Wisconsin L. R. 1547–1594Google Scholar.

5 Starr, K.W., “The Supreme Court and the Federal Judicial System,” (1992) 42 Case Western Reserve L. R. 1209–1222Google Scholar; De Figueiredo, J.H. and Tiller, E.H., “Congressional Control of the Courts: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of Expansion of the Judiciary,” (1996) 34 Journal of Law and Economics 435–462CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Carlton, C.F., “The Grinding Wheels of Justice Need Some Grease: Designing the Federal Courts of the 21st Century,” (Summer/Fall, 1997) Kansas Journal of Law and Public PolicyGoogle Scholar.

6 Tjoflat, G.B., “More Judges, Less Justice,” (1993) 79 American Bar Association Journal 70–73Google Scholar.

7 Elasticity refers to the percentage change in a variable resulting from a 1% change in another variable.

8 Formally if P = a +bL, the elasticity is equal to:

If a = 0 then e = 1. If a > 0 then e < 1.

9 Formally if P = aLb then e = b.

10 Beenstock, M. and Haitovsky, Y., “Does the Appointment of Judges Increase the Output of the Judiciary?” (2003) (forthcoming) International Review of Law and EconomicsGoogle Scholar.

11 The data are available at the Israel Social Science Data Center (ISDC): http://isdc.huji.ac.il.