This paper reviews recent efforts in social science to analyze labor enforcement in low-andmiddle income countries (LMIC) and inform policy debates. Despite the existing limitations, the empirical evidence suggests that: 1) Enforcement is quite low in LMIC; there are fewer inspectors and...

At the beginning of 2017, the College of Eurojust initiated a project designed to assess the impact on judicial cooperation in criminal matters within the European Union (EU) of the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Joined Cases C-203/15 and C-698/15, Tele2 Sverige...

EuroMed Justice aims to strengthen the strategic and operational cooperation in judicial criminal matters between South Partner Countries and European Union (EU) Member States to contribute to the protection of their respective citizens against criminal activities, with due respect for the rule...

EuroMed Justice aims to strengthen the strategic and operational cooperation in judicial criminal matters between South Partner Countries and European Union (EU) Member States to contribute to the protection of their respective citizens against criminal activities, with due respect for the rule...

Israel's government is rapidly dismantling the separation of powers and expanding its control over the state apparatus. The military response to the attack by Hamas and other armed groups on 7 October 2023 appears to be leading to a permanent reoccupation of the Gaza Strip. The "voluntary"...

Israel's government is rapidly dismantling the separation of powers and expanding its control over the state apparatus. The military response to the attack by Hamas and other armed groups on 7 October 2023 appears to be leading to a permanent reoccupation of the Gaza Strip. The "voluntary"...

This study presents a meta-regression analysis on the literature of courts efficiency. The metadata set comprises 264 efficiency scores retrieved from 36 papers published from 1992 to 2019. Our models explain a substantial proportion of both within- and between-study heterogeneity. Estimates...

This paper reviews recent efforts in social science to analyze labor enforcement in low-andmiddle income countries (LMIC) and inform policy debates. Despite the existing limitations, the empirical evidence suggests that: 1) Enforcement is quite low in LMIC; there are fewer inspectors and...

We computationally reproduce the central findings in Mehmood (2022), which studied the effect of a 2010 reform in Pakistan replacing the presidential appointment of high-court judges with peer appointments. Mehmood leveraged judicial records interpreted and coded by lawyers in Pakistan at the...

Because judges exercise discretion in how they handle and decide cases, heterogeneity across judges can affect case outcomes and, thus, preferences among litigants for particular judges. However, selection obscures the causal mechanisms that drive these preferences. We overcome this challenge by...

Why do some countries prosecute political corruption while others do not? The studies of judicial systems seem to place the answer to that question within the realm of the quality of judicial independence and the quality of judicial institutions designed to protect judicial independence. While...

This work makes sure to examine the three basic concepts: the judicial system, justice and most especially, the law. In furtherance, the work delves into creating a proper nexus between the concepts of justice and law and contends that justice is derived from laws and the former is the primary...

This Article explores the concept of “judicial federalization doctrine.” The doctrine emanates from well-documented areas of federal constitutional law, including exactions, racially motivated peremptory challenges, the exclusionary rule, same-sex sodomy, marriage, and freedom of speech and...

As support has grown to reduce the footprint of criminal law by defunding the police, volunteer prosecution—a practice that has garnered little attention—continues to expand criminal law’s footprint. Volunteer prosecutors come in many different forms, but their core similarity is that they...

Training and/or deciding in international protection cases as a judge is a challenging task. This is because of the complexity of this area of the law, the ever-evolving global geopolitical situation and the potential human consequences that are at stake. To respond to this, judicial...

This report explores the paths to increase access to justice in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Situations (FCS). It provides an analytical overview of the most common barriers to access to justice and presents the value and prerequisites of eight options available to governments to increase...

Liberia's lack of effectiveness in handling judicial disputes has been consistently recognized as a weakness and one of the main obstacles to the country's transition out of fragility. Liberia performs poorly in international datasets benchmarking justice and the rule of law. For instance, in...

I document that experienced decision makers can be influenced by irrelevant events in a high stakes setting, felony sentencing in Cook County. Using a stacked difference-in-differences design, I estimate that judges hand down sentences that are 13% longer after sentencing a first degree murder....

Disagreements over business deals, land boundaries, or loan non-repayment are very common sources of disputes, and courts are congested in developing countries. We evaluate the effects of the government introducing formal "village courts" (VCs) in rural Bangladesh using a randomized controlled...

The administration of Justice is one of the primary functions of the state. The Constitution of Nepal has clearly entrusted the responsibility of the administration of Justice to the Judiciary. The Judiciary is one of the institutions on which rests the noble edifice of democracy and rule of...

De jure judicial independence (JI) is the single most important predictor of de facto JI. In this paper, we describe under what conditions countries are likely to include JI in their constitutions. We describe and analyze both their original choice in this regard as well as change over time...

We study the role of formal institutions of contract enforcement in facilitating investments in small and medium firms(MSME). In a framework where established entrepreneurs can enforce contracts informally using their network ties and hierarchical advantage, we argue that an efficient formal...

Statutory interpretation is at the cutting edge of legal scholarship and, now, legislative activity. As legislatures have increasingly begun to perceive judges as activist meddlers, some legislatures have found a creative solution to the perceived control problem: statutory directives. Statutory...

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...

Comparative legal research is of greatest practical value to policymakers, and to the bench and bar, when grounded in the systematic collection and analysis of empirical data. By applying empirical research methods to comparative law questions, legal scholars can meaningfully contribute to...

We provide a selective survey of the literature on profiling by criminal justice agents, including changes in the nature of discrimination resulting from the proliferation of algorithms for prediction. We argue for a taxonomy of harms that differs somewhat from the conventional approach taken by...

This note is in reply to a review of my monograph Transnational Networks and Elite Self-Empowerment: The Making of the Judiciary in Contemporary Europe and Beyond (OUP 2018) by LSE Professor Conor Gearty, Vice-President of the British Academy titled The Courts in Europe Today: Subverting or...

The literatures on non-market strategy in business studies and the thematically intersecting field of lobbying and interest group research in political science both exhibit a profound blind spot when it comes to how corporate influencing unfolds in relation to the judiciary and the broader...

The 1991 Policy of liberalisation, globalisation and privatisation was a complete game changer for the Indian economy and by an extension, for the justice system in the country. The Indian legal infrastructure needed reforms even before 1991; however, the cycle of reforms that started post 1991 gave...

We develop new quasi-experimental tools to measure disparate impact, regardless of its source, in the context of bail decisions. We show that omitted variables bias in pretrial release rate comparisons can be purged by using the quasi-random assignment of judges to estimate average pretrial...

We study the role of formal institutions of contract enforcement in facilitating investments in small and medium firms(MSME). In a framework where established entrepreneurs can enforce contracts informally using their network ties and hierarchical advantage, we argue that an efficient formal...

In Romania, the appointment of top prosecutors is still one of the main competences of the executive power. The legislative procedure in force, which is incomplete and essentially devoid of meritocracy, has required the advice of international experts, such as the Venice Commission, to...