The Case for Managed Judges: Learning from Japan after the Political Upheaval of 1993

John Ramseyer and Eric Rasmusen ()

No 2005-03, Working Papers from Indiana University, Kelley School of Business, Department of Business Economics and Public Policy

Abstract: Although the executive branch appoints Japanese Supreme Court justices as it does in the United States, a personnel office under the control of the Supreme Court rotates lower court Japanese judges through a variety of posts. This creates the possibility that politicians might indirectly use the postings to reward or punish judges. For forty years, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) controlled the legislature and appointed the Supreme Court justices who in turn controlled the careers of these lower-court judges. In 1993, it temporarily lost control. We use regression analysis to examine whether the end of the LDP’s electoral lock changed the court’s promotion system, and find surprisingly little change. Whether before or after 1993, the Supreme Court used the personnel office to "manage" the careers of lower court judges. The result: uniform and predictable judgments that economize on litigation costs by facilitating out-of-court settlements.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in The University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 2006

Downloads: (external link)
http://kelley.iu.edu/riharbau/RePEc/iuk/wpaper/bepp2005-03-ramseyer-rasmusen.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Case for Managed Judges: Learning from Japan after the Political Upheaval of 1993 (2005)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iuk:wpaper:2005-03

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Indiana University, Kelley School of Business, Department of Business Economics and Public Policy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Rick Harbaugh ().