Backlogs and litigation rates: Testing congestion equilibrium across European judiciaries

Abstract

To address the problem of court backlogs, policymakers in many countries have been pursuing reforms to reduce case disposition times and the demand for litigation. Yet Priest's (1989) congestion-equilibrium theory states that reforms aimed at reducing court delays are offset by an increased tendency to litigate. To test the congestion-equilibrium hypothesis, we use biennial panel data from 36 European countries over the period 2006-2012. Specifically, we estimate (i) a repeated cross-section model using conventional (pooled) OLS, (ii) a standard (static) random-effects panel data model, and (iii) a (static) random effects model using the new method of unconditional quantile regression (UQR) to examine the countrylevel relationship between litigation rates and court backlogs (measured by the number of pending cases per judge in each country). In accordance with the congestion equilibrium hypothesis, the UQR estimates suggest a negative impact of court backlogs on litigation rates but only in highly litigious countries, insofar as the latter experience a high degree of judicial independence. This shows the need for custom-tailored policy approaches to tackling court delay based on countries' existing litigation rates.

An Economic Theory of Court Performance: Evidence from the Court of Justice of the European Union

“…Inspired by consumer choice theory, we model court performance as a trade-off dynamic between decision-making speed and quality under a budget constraint. This approach is different from Vereeck and Mühl (2000) who focus exclusively on the demand side of litigation and more related to Falavigna et al (2015); Beenstock and Haitovsky (2004); Bielen et al (2018);Dimitrova-Grajzl et al (2012) who examine court performance through the lens of frontier production analysis. What many studies have, nonetheless, in common is that their main dependent variable of interest is the sheer number of cases resolved by courts.…”

The role of the constitutional complaint in the legislative process: Comparative legal aspect

“…In these conditions, the comparative legal study of the institution of constitutional complaint becomes relevant, which allows exchanging experience in solving general problems of constitutional development (Bentsen et al, 2019). Given the growing importance of human rights protection, the tendency to exercise constitutional review of individual administrative acts and court judgments on the basis of individual complaints becomes apparent, because human rights violations are often the result of unconstitutional individual acts, as Bielen et al (2018) note.…”

Judicial Performance and Trust in Legal Systems: Findings from a Decade of Surveys in over 20 European Countries

“…Fortunately, the CEPEJ has systematically collected comparable objective data on judicial systems in Europe, particularly on judicial resources and pending and resolved cases in courts. The use of these data has become standard in the literature, including studies on the determinants of litigation (Buonanno and Galizzi, 2014; Bielen et al., 2018), aggregate judicial quality (Cross and Donelson, 2010) and judicial performance (Bielen, Marneffe, and Vereeck, 2015; Voigt and El‐Bialy, 2016), entrepreneurship (Ippoliti, Melcarne, and Ramello, 2015), and favorable economic outcomes (Lorenzani and Lucidi, 2014). In particular, CEPEJ collects two performance measures: Disposition time and Clearance rate .…”