Zurück zum Heft
Cover von: The Duration of Judicial Deliberation: Evidence from Belgium
Peter Grajzl, Samantha Bielen, Valentina Dimitrova-Grajzl, Wim Marneffe

The Duration of Judicial Deliberation: Evidence from Belgium

Rubrik: Articles
Jahrgang 174 (2018) / Heft 2, S. 303-333 (31)
Publiziert 05.07.2018
DOI 10.1628/093245617X14926792029174
Veröffentlicht auf Englisch.
  • Artikel PDF
  • lieferbar
  • 10.1628/093245617X14926792029174
Beschreibung
We utilize case-level data from a large Belgian court to study a policy-relevant but thus far empirically unexplored aspect of judicial behavior: the time that a judge takes to deliberate on a case before rendering a verdict. Exploiting the de facto random administrative assignment of filed cases among the serving judges and using survival-analysis methods, we find that the duration of judicial deliberation varies not only with measures of case complexity, but also with judge and disputing-party characteristics. We further find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that longer judicial deliberation improves the quality of judicial decisions.