We discuss a central question in the study of courts: What do judges want? We suggest three different domains that might serve as the basic preferences of a judge: case dispositions and rules, caseloads and case mixes, and social consequences. We emphasize preferences over dispositions on the...

We review the basic building blocks of the case-space approach to modeling courts, particularly cases, dispositions, and rules. We provide numerous examples of case spaces. We clarify the policy-making actions of courts, distinguishing statutory interpretation, review of agency rule-making on...

We explore the properties of voting rules and procedures employed by appellate courts in the US. Our model features: (1) a two-stage decision-making process (first over case disposition, then over majority opinion content), (2) dispositional consistency (the new rule must yield the Court's...

This article develops a theory on the legal profession's participation in providing services to indigent clients. Our theory is based on two factors: whether lawyers have successful practices, and whether the legal aid delivered to indigent clients is free or below market price. Pro bono signals...

This essay reviews Epstein, Landes, and Posner's The Behavior of Federal Judges: A Theoretical and Empirical Study of Rational Choice. Their book systematically asks how the role of ideology varies across the tiers of the federal judicial hierarchy. A major finding is that the impact of ideology...

This paper points out an intrinsic inefficiency in contemporary courts: courts adjudicate publicly, leading to deadweight loss in the form of reputational damages. I build a model to show that arbitration can circumvent this inefficiency by affording disputants a renegotiation opportunity...

This article generalizes the analysis of settlement under joint and several liability from lawsuits involving one plaintiff and two defendants to those involving namp;#8805;2 defendants. We demonstrate that, depending upon the correlation of outcomes among the defendants, but regardless of the...

The effect of attorney experience in civil litigation has not been causally identified because attorneys everywhere are not randomly assigned to clients and detailed measures of jurist experience have not been available. Using a unique data set from Taiwan, we measured attorney experience by...

Today's conversation about antitrust civil remedies generally, and the private action specifically, focuses most often on optimal deterrence and effectiveness. Generally lost in conversation is the basic idea that antitrust violations cause economic harm, and that those victimized by that harm...

Plaintiffs’ lawyers in the United States play a key role in combating corporate fraud. Shareholders who lose money as a result of fraud can file securities class actions to recover their losses, but most shareholders do not have enough money at stake to justify overseeing the cases filed on...