The Implications of High Court Docket Control for Resource Allocation and Legal Efficiency

A key source of institutional variation across judicial systems is the degree of control that the highest court has over its docket. Despite this variation, the consequences of various institutional designs in judicial hierarchies remain relatively unexplored by the theoretical literature. In this article, we develop a formal model of high court resource allocation. We analyze the model under two institutional designs: (1) the Court must allocate at least some minimum effort to all cases; (2) the Court has complete discretion over which cases to hear. We analyze the model to identify the optimal allocation of resources across cases as the institutional design varies. We then consider the conditions under which the various institutional rules increase or decrease the legal efficiency, or performance, of the judicial system. Our analysis reveals the complex relationship among the institutional rules governing high court dockets, the design of the judicial hierarchy, and the performance of the legal system. We find that the effect of institutional design on legal efficiency is conditioned by the performance of the lower courts and the incentives for judicial ‘shirking’ at the High Court. While requiring some per-case effort by the High Court may marginally increase aggregate efficiency, such a requirement causes the High Court to divert resources away from the most difficult cases toward relatively easier cases. The consequence is that more difficult cases are less likely to be decided correctly, while relatively easier cases are more likely to be decided correctly. The model substantively informs policy debates among judicial reformers and scholars concerned with institutional design as well as disciplinary debates about case selection and judicial decision making.