Law or strategic calculus? Abstention in the Argentine Supreme Court

Sergio Muro and Alejandro Chehtman

International Review of Law and Economics, 2020, vol. 62, issue C

Abstract: Abstention theory suggests that self-interest leads voters to abstain. While this theory has been studied in different settings, abstention in courts has received scant attention. Jacobi and Kontorovich (2014) hypothesize that stare decisis renders abstention theory inapplicable to courts. We test this prediction empirically using data from the Argentine Supreme Court. Consistent with abstention theory, we show that Justices whose vote is pivotal have a lower probability of abstention than non-pivotal ones. In contrast, we fail to find evidence in support of the probability of abstention being positively related to appeals without stare decisis implications.

Keywords: High court; Abstention; Rational choice; Strategic; Precedent (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0144818819300602
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:irlaec:v:62:y:2020:i:c:s0144818819300602

DOI: 10.1016/j.irle.2020.105889

Access Statistics for this article

International Review of Law and Economics is currently edited by C. Ott, A. W. Katz and H-B. Schäfer

More articles in International Review of Law and Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().