High Court Docket Control, Resource Allocation, and Legal Efficiency

Abstract

A key source of institutional variation across judicial systems is the degree of control that the highest court has over its docket. However, despite this variation, the consequences of various institutional designs in judicial hierarchies remains relatively unexplored by the theoretical literature. In this paper, we develop a formal model of high court resource allocation. We analyze the model under two institutional designs. First, the Court must allocate at least some minimum effort to all cases; second, 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. The model informs substantively policy debates among judicial reformers and scholars concerned with institutional design as well as disciplinary debates about case selection and judicial decision-making.