Administrative law judges are neglected but powerful actors in public welfare bureaucracies, presiding over quasi-judicial hearings triggered if participants challenge a bureaucratic decision on public welfare benefits. Drawing on ethnographic observations of fair hearings as well as interviews...

Employing the universe of juvenile court decisions in a U.S. state between 1996 and 2012, we analyze the effects of emotional shocks associated with unexpected outcomes of football games played by a prominent college team in the state. We investigate the behavior of judges, the conduct of whom...

This article uses insights from cognitive psychology to contrast judge-made law with legislative and executive policy-making. I argue that the predominant narrow conception of reason and rationality have led to overly optimistic views of deliberate policymaking at the expense of traditional...

How much should judges be paid? We first survey the considerable history of the debate and identify the implicit causal claims made about the effect of judicial pay. We find that claims about the effect of pay on the composition and quality of the judiciary have remained remarkably similar over...

The burgeoning federal case load has focused public and professional attention upon the need to better allocate judicial resources. Recent Supreme Court decisions have greatly extended the reach of 42 U.S.C. section 1983, arguably at the expense of judicial economy and established notions of...

The fundamental purpose of a tort trial is to allocate responsibility. However, attributing fault is difficult, and decades of research in psychology have shown that human beings are prone to make systematic errors in performing this task. What can be done about this? The United States and...

Talk of the Supreme Court's legitimacy is in the air. Indeed, it is almost unavoidable. Critics argue that the Court is in danger of being perceived by the public as illegitimate. Is that true? And if so, what consequences would likely follow? This article will address the question of the...

This Article uses public choice theory and the new institutionalism to discuss the incentives, proclivities, and shared backgrounds of lawyers and judges. In America every law-making judge has a single unifying characteristic, each is a former lawyer. This shared background has powerful and...