We document judicial leniency on defendant birthdays across 5 million decisions. Our results are consistent with reference-dependent social preferences. First, French sentences are 1% fewer and around 5% shorter. Second, U.S. federal judges also round down sentences except when rounding up makes...

Less than 1% of U.S. Federal judges report political motivations for retirement and resignation. However using two centuries of data, I show that 13% of retirements and 36% of resignations follow political cycles. When the President comes from a different political party as judge's party of...