Ideas Have Consequences: The Impact of Law and Economics on American Justice / Elliott Ash, Daniel L. Chen, Suresh Naidu.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ash, Elliott.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Chen, Daniel L.

Naidu, Suresh.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w29788.

NBER working paper series no. w29788

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2022.

Summary:

This paper provides a quantitative analysis of the effects of the early law-and- economics movement on the U.S. judiciary. We focus on the Manne Economics Institute for Federal Judges, an intensive economics course that trained almost half of federal judges between 1976 and 1999. Using the universe of published opinions in U.S. Circuit Courts and 1 million District Court criminal sentencing decisions, we estimate the within-judge effect of Manne program attendance. Selection into attendance was limited--the program was popular across judges from all backgrounds, was regularly oversubscribed, and admitted judges on a first-come first-served basis--and results are robust to a variety of automatically selected covariates predicting the timing of attendance. We find that after attending economics training, participating judges use more economics language in their opinions, issue more conservative decisions in economics-related cases, rule against regulatory agencies more often, favor more lax enforcement in antitrust cases, and impose more/longer criminal sentences. The law-and- economics movement had policy consequences via its influence on U.S. federal judges.

Notes:

Print version record

February 2022.