Professional vs. non-professional labour judges: their impact on the quality of judicial decisions

This paper proposes an empirical analysis to study if the quality of judicial decisions is influenced by the number and type of judges working in the court. A set of econometric models will be estimated in order to explain the differences existing in the confirmation rate of the sentences dictated by the 339 Spanish Labour Courts taken as a sample, over the period 2004–2017. The acting of other judges in the court, besides the incumbent judge, will be considered as a treatment. In addition, different control covariates as economic determinants and other factors closely related to judicial activity will be empirically analysed, taking into account possible endogeneity problems in the treatment variable. Main results show that the quality of judicial decisions decreases when other judges besides the incumbent one are acting in the court, but this effect is smaller when the other judges are non-professional judges. This paper aims to contribute to the literature on the Economics of Court Performance, particularly on the empirical analysis of the quality of judicial decisions, and it also looks to provide relevant suggestions for judicial policy making.