论文标题
政客的司法偏爱：小额索赔法院的证据
Judicial Favoritism of Politicians: Evidence from Small Claims Court
论文作者
论文摘要
多项研究记录了比较司法系统中的种族，性别，政治意识形态或种族偏见。为了补充文献，我们调查法官在一名诉讼人是政治家时是否对案件进行裁定。我们建议一种权力勾结理论，根据该理论，法官可能会使用裁决来购买合作或威胁政府其他分支机构的成员。我们使用在巴西圣保罗州的小额索赔案例样本进行测试，那里不应该存在勾结。结果表明，对诉讼人的政客的负面偏见为3.7个百分点，表明法官在法庭上惩罚而不是偏爱政治家。在低血统案件中的这种惩罚是警告政客在行使支票和余额时不要跨越司法机构的警告信号，这暗示了发展环境中司法独立性的另一个障碍。
Multiple studies have documented racial, gender, political ideology, or ethnical biases in comparative judicial systems. Supplementing this literature, we investigate whether judges rule cases differently when one of the litigants is a politician. We suggest a theory of power collusion, according to which judges might use rulings to buy cooperation or threaten members of the other branches of government. We test this theory using a sample of small claims cases in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, where no collusion should exist. The results show a negative bias of 3.7 percentage points against litigant politicians, indicating that judges punish, rather than favor, politicians in court. This punishment in low-salience cases serves as a warning sign for politicians not to cross the judiciary when exercising checks and balances, suggesting yet another barrier to judicial independence in development settings.
