Selection and Decision in Judicial Process around the World
Empirical Inquires

This book empirically explores whether and under what conditions the judicial process is efficient. Three specific issues are addressed: first, disputants self-select into litigation. Do they tend to bring cases with merit? Second, filed cases differ in their social import. Do courts select more important cases to devote more resource to? Third, courts establish precedents, affect resource allocation in the cases at hand, and influence future behaviours of transacting parties. Do courts, like Judge Posner asserts, tend to make decisions that enhance allocative efficiency and reduce transaction costs? Positive answers to the above questions attest to the efficiency of the judicial process. What drive efficient or inefficient outcomes are the selections and decisions by litigants, litigators, and judges. Their earlier selections and decisions affect later ones. Eleven chapters in this book, authored by leading empirical legal scholars in the world, deal with these issues in the US, Europe, and Asia.

Introduction Yun-chien Chang; 1. Do patent law suits target invalid patents? Michael Frakes and Melissa Wassermann; 2. Platform procedure: using technology to facilitate (efficient) civil settlement J. J. Prescott and Alexander Sanchez; 3. Speedy adjudication in hard cases and low settlement rates in easy cases: an empirical analysis of Taiwan courts with comparison to US federal courts Yun-chien Chang and William Hubbard; 4. How lower courts respond to a change in a legal rule Anthony Niblett; 5. Career judge system and court decision biases: preliminary evidence from Japan Hatsuru Morita and Manabu Matsunaka; 6. Judges avoid ex post but not ex ante inefficiency: theory and empirical evidence from Taiwan Yun-chien Chang; 7. When winning is not enough: prevailing-party civil appeals in state courts Michael Heise; 8. The evolution of case influence in modern consumer standard form contracts Florencia Marotta-Wurgler; 9. Judging insurance antidiscrimination law Ronen Avraham, Alma Cohen and Ity Shurtz, 10. Are judges harsher with repeat offenders? Evidence from the European Court of Human Rights Eric Langlais, Alessandro Melcarne and Giovanni Ramello; 11. Does efficiency trump legality? The case of the German Constitutional Court Christoph Engel.

Yun-chien Chang is a Research Professor at Institutum Iurisprudentiae, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan and serves as the Director of its Empirical Legal Studies Center. He was a visiting professor at New York University, University of Chicago, Universität St. Gallen, University of Haifa, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam. Professor Chang has authored and co-authored more than ninety journal articles and book chapters. His English articles have appeared in leading journals in the world, such as the University of Chicago Law Review; the Journal of Legal Studies; the Journal of Legal Analysis; the Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization; the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies; International Review of Law and Economics; among others.