The Hidden 'Judiciary': An Empirical Examination of Executive Branch Justice
Vanderbilt Law and Economics Research Paper No. 09-12
56 Pages Posted: 8 Apr 2009
Date Written: April 7, 2009
Abstract
Administrative law judges attract little scholarly attention, yet they decide a large fraction of all civil disputes. In this Article, we demonstrate that these executive branch judges, like their counterparts in the judicial branch, tend to make predominantly intuitive rather than predominantly deliberative decisions. This finding sheds new light on executive branch justice by suggesting that judicial intuition, not judicial independence, is the most significant challenge facing these important judicial officers.
Keywords: Judges, ALI, Decision-making, Intuition, Deliberation, Heuristic and biases
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