Multidomain judging and administration of justice: evidence from a major emerging-market jurisdiction
| Author | Caio Castelliano,Peter Grajzl,Eduardo Watanabe |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00208523221084921 |
| Published date | 01 June 2023 |
| Date | 01 June 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Multidomain judging and
administration of justice:
evidence from a major
emerging-market
jurisdiction
Caio Castelliano
Ministry of the Economy, Brazil; Administration of Justice
Research Group, University of Brasilia, Brazil
Peter Grajzl
Washington and Lee University, USA; CESifo, Germany
Eduardo Watanabe
University of Brasilia, Brazil
Abstract
Inefficacious courts and limited judicial resources are a ubiquitous problem in many jur-
isdictions 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 multido-
main judging for the efficacy of Brazilian administration of justice. In contrast to conven-
tional 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.
Corresponding author:
Peter Grajzl, Department of Economics, The Williams School of Commerce, Economics and Politics,
Washington and Lee University, 204 West Washington St, Lexington, VA 24450, USA.
Email: grajzlp@wlu.edu
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
2023, Vol. 89(2) 577–594
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00208523221084921
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
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 mul-
tidomain judging does not appear to harm court efficacy and when, in contrast, a reduc-
tion 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 administra-
tive practices are known to exist in other jurisdictions, our findings have implications
beyond Brazilian borders.
Keywords
Brazil, courts, efficacy, justice administration, multidomain judging, panel data
Introduction
Court backlogs and delays in administration of justice have been a pervasive problem in
many countries, giving rise to considerable social costs. Accordingly, in recent years,
court efficacy has emerged as a distinct dimension of court performance and the focus of
the administration of justice in many jurisdictions worldwide. The resulting emphasis has
generated a growing body of empirical literature and spurred debates about feasible policy
approaches to enhancing court efficacy (see e.g. CEPEJ, 2020; Frison-Roche and Sodev,
2005: 595, 602; Marciano et al., 2019; Piana, 2017; Ramello and Voigt, 2012; Voigt, 2016).
In this article, we empirically assess the efficacy consequences of one administrative
solution to the problem of overburdened courts in Brazil, a major emerging-market jur-
isdiction. In Brazil, state and federal courts resolve civil and criminal disputes in three
distinct domains: cases that rely on ordinary judicial procedure, cases that apply
special procedure, and cases that constitute appeals to judicial decisions obtained using
special procedure. At any given point in time, different court offices, often specialized
in the disposition of cases in a particular domain, face different caseload pressures and
judicial staffing needs. In an effort to tackle the resulting imbalances, existing judges,
who are normally assigned to the disposition of cases in a single domain in one court
office, are often directed to dispose cases in an additional domain, one applicable to a dif-
ferent court office. To facilitate administration of justice, Brazilian judges thereby rou-
tinely engage in a practice that we refer to as ’multidomain judging’.
Yet, multidomain judging is also anticipated to come at a cost. Multidomain judges
often find themselves having to split their work time between different activity domains
and switch between distinct procedural rules and forms of decision-making, as well as
incurring non-pecuniary costs owing to commuting or relocation. To obtain an improved,
evidence-basedgrasp of multidomain judging and itsimpact on justice administration,it is
therefore important to subject this administrative practice to empirical scrutiny.
From the perspective of the administration of justice, one especially policy-relevant
facet of multidomain judging pertains to its impact on court efficacy in any given
578 International Review of Administrative Sciences 89(2)
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