Langer & Doherty: Managerial Judging, Court’s Limited Information and Parties’ Resistance

Maximo Langer & Joseph W. Doherty (both Univ. of California, Los Angeles - Law) have posted Managerial Judging, Court’s Limited Information and Parties’ Resistance: An Empirical Assessment of Why the Reforms to Expedite the Procedure of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia Did Not Work. Here's the abstract:

This article analyzes whether managerial judging reforms that were introduced to expedite procedure at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) achieved their goal. Using survival analysis—Weibull regression—the paper tests the hypothesis that the higher the number of reforms a case was subjected to, the shorter the pretrial and trial phase of that case should be. Our six models for pretrial and trial reveal that in all pretrial and trial models the number of reforms is significantly correlated with longer pretrial and trial. The article explains that reforms made process longer rather than shorter because ICTY judges did not use their managerial powers or used them deficiently, and prosecution and defense managed to neutralize the implementation of the reforms. To explain judges’ behavior, the paper articulates an unnoticed challenge for managerial judging—the court is likely to have limited information about the case that may lead judges to restrict use of their managerial powers to avoid making inefficient decisions. In addition, ICTY did not have an implementation plan to encourage judges to change their behavior. The paper also explains the incentives that prosecution and defense had to neutralize the reforms.