The Judicial Expert in a Two-Tier Hierarchy

We study how the presence of biased expertise influences judicial decision-making. When an appeals-court judge's decision depends only on the information he gets about the expertise proceedings, a perfectly separating equilibrium may arise in which the losing litigant appeals only if the trial-...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of institutional and theoretical economics 2014-09, Vol.170 (3), p.537-570
Main Author: Oytana, Yves
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Appellate courts
Bayesian analysis
Bias
Court costs
Court hearings & proceedings
Decision making
Defendants
Economics and Finance
Experts
False negative errors
Humanities and Social Sciences
Judges
Judges & magistrates
Legal proceedings
Litigants
Litigation
Minimization of cost
Plaintiffs
State court decisions
Studies
Trials
Citations: Items that cite this one
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Summary:We study how the presence of biased expertise influences judicial decision-making. When an appeals-court judge's decision depends only on the information he gets about the expertise proceedings, a perfectly separating equilibrium may arise in which the losing litigant appeals only if the trial-court judge's decision is incorrect. Surprisingly enough, an increase in the probability that the expertise is biased and a decrease in the level of scrutiny of the appeals court may be beneficial. When the appeals-court judge uses a Bayesian mechanism to make his decision, a perfectly separating equilibrium never exists.
ISSN:0932-4569
1614-0559
DOI:10.1628/093245614X14017020626304