Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
8-2021
Abstract
We investigate whether judicial decisions are affected by career concerns of judges by analyzing two questions: Do judges respond to incentives to pander by ruling in favor of the government in the hope of receiving jobs after retiring from the Supreme Court? Does the government reward judges who rule in its favor with prestigious jobs? We construct a data set of Supreme Court of India cases involving the government for 1999–2014. We find that incentives to pander have a causal effect on judicial decision-making, and they are jointly determined by the importance of the case and whether the judge retires with enough time left in a government’s term to be rewarded with a prestigious job. We also find that authoring favorable judgments increases the likelihood of being appointed to prestigious post–Supreme Court jobs. This suggests the presence of corruption in the form of government influence over judicial decisions.
Keywords
Courts, judges, corruption, India
Discipline
Asian Studies | Courts | Public Economics
Research Areas
Applied Microeconomics
Publication
Journal of Law and Economics
Volume
64
First Page
479
Last Page
511
ISSN
0022-2186
Identifier
10.1086/713728
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Embargo Period
1-6-2023
Citation
ANEY, Madhav S.; DAM, Shubhankar; and KO, Giovanni.
Jobs for justice(s): Corruption in the Supreme Court of India. (2021). Journal of Law and Economics. 64, 479-511.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/2507
Copyright Owner and License
Publisher
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1086/713728
Comments
See full text of working paper version at https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/1928