Judicial Accountability and Economic Policy Outcomes: Evidence from Employment Discrimination Charges

How and whether judges should be held accountable is a key issue in the design of a legalsystem. Thirty-seven of the forty-eight continental states use some method of judicial selectionwhich involves a direct role for citizens in selecting or re-appointing the judiciary. We identifytwo theoretical reasons why the method used for choosing judges is important – (i) a selectioneffect if the competence or underlying preferences of judges is affected, (ii) an incentive effect ifthe judges who are chosen behave differently because of the method used for their reappointment.This paper uses data from the U.S. to investigate whether judicial selectionmethods affect the number of employment discrimination charges filed for the period 1973-2000. Our results show that states that appoint their judges have lower levels of discriminationcharges compared to those that use some form of election. The results appear to be driven bystates where judges being subject to re-election incentives rather than because judges withdifferent preferences/competences are being chosen.[...]