Multidomain judging and administration of justice: evidence from a major emerging-market jurisdiction

Abstract

Inefficacious courts and limited judicial resources are a ubiquitous problem in many jurisdictions worldwide. To facilitate administration of justice, court administrators must therefore resort to unconventional practices. In Brazilian state and federal courts, judges normally assigned to the disposition of cases in a single domain are often directed to dispose cases in an additional domain, thus engaging in multidomain judging. Using a comprehensive court-level panel dataset, we investigate the consequences of multidomain judging for the efficacy of Brazilian administration of justice. In contrast to conventional wisdom, we find no evidence that multidomain judging reduces court efficacy in resolution of special-procedure cases and appeals to special-procedure cases. Multidomain judging evidently reduces court efficacy exclusively in the resolution of ordinary-procedure cases, and even then only when judges assigned to the disposition of those cases are instructed to additionally resolve special-procedure cases. We discuss plausible explanations for this and the policy implications of our findings.

Points for practitioners

Multidomain judging in Brazil is best viewed as a pragmatic policy response to binding resource constraints in justice administration. Our analysis reveals in what contexts multidomain judging does not appear to harm court efficacy and when, in contrast, a reduction in the extent of multidomain judging would improve court efficacy. Our article offers the first evidence-based insight into the efficacy repercussions of a pervasive yet understudied administrative practice in Brazilian courts. Because related administrative practices are known to exist in other jurisdictions, our findings have implications beyond Brazilian borders.