This paper develops a new test for identifying racial bias in the context of bail decisions - a high-stakes setting with large disparities between white and black defendants. We motivate our analysis using Becker's (1957) model of racial bias, which predicts that rates of pre-trial misconduct...

This paper tests Harry Arthur's theory that Canadian law societies engage in an "ethical economy," in which they use their regulatory powers only in high reward/low risk cases - i.e., where the practitioner is less likely to resist their authority and the offence is morally unambiguous....