Judicial Independence in Civil Law Regimes: Econometrics from Japan

Abstract

Because civil law courts hire unproven jurists into career judiciaries, many use elaborate incentive structures to prevent their judges from shirking. Such structures could at least hypothetically be used to influence judges toward a variety of ends. In this article we use data from Japan to discover both the general determinants of judicial career success, and the actual extent of political manipulation by the monitoring office, the Secretariat. We find strong evidence that the Secretariat rewards the smartest and most productive judges, but more controversially, we also find signs that political considerations influence the careers of sitting judges. (Chicago Law and Economics Working Paper No. 37 - 2nd series, University of Chicago, January 1996) Contact the Law and Economics Program at Boalt Hall, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720 for a copy of this paper.

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