POLITICS IN THE COURTROOM: POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND JURY DECISION MAKING

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Anwar, Shamena; Bayer, Patrick; Hjalmarsson, Randi
• 署名单位: RAND Corporation; Duke University; University of Gothenburg; National Bureau of Economic Research; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR)
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1542-4766
• DOI: 10.1093/jeea/jvy013
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 834-875
• 关键词: judges; INFORMATION; selection; matter; TRIAL; MODEL; BIAS

摘要

This paper uses data from the Gothenburg District Court in Sweden and a research design that exploits the random assignment of politically appointed jurors (termed namndeman) to make three contributions to the literature on jury decision-making: (i) an assessment of whether systematic biases exist in the Swedish namndeman system, (ii) causal evidence on the impact of juror political party on verdicts, and (iii) an empirical examination of the role of peer effects in jury decision-making. The results reveal a number of systematic biases: convictions for young defendants and those with distinctly Arabic names increase substantially when they are randomly assigned jurors from the far-right (nationalist) Swedish Democrat party, whereas convictions in cases with a female victim increase markedly when they are assigned jurors from the far-left (feminist) Vanster party. An analysis of peer effects implies that jurors from the far-left and far-right parties influence the votes of namndem an from centrist parties in a way that is consistent with their respective party platforms. This analysis also suggests that at least some of these peer effects result in genuine changes of opinions (affecting trial outcomes), rather than vote changes motivated solely to reach unanimous decisions.