Why stare decisis?
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Peer-reviewed
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Abstract
© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All Courts rule ex-post, after most economic decisions are sunk. This can generate a time-inconsistency problem. From an ex-ante perspective, Courts will have the ex-post temptation to be excessively lenient. This observation is at the root of the rule of precedent, known as stare decisis.Stare decisis forces Courts to weigh the benefits of leniency towards the current parties against the beneficial effects that tougher decisions have on future ones.We study these dynamics and find that stare decisis guarantees that precedents evolve towards ex-ante efficient decisions, thus alleviating the Courts' time-inconsistency problem. However, the dynamics do not converge to full efficiency.
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Keywords
Stare decisis, Dynamics of precedents, Time-inconsistency, Case Law
Journal Title
Review of Economic Dynamics
Conference Name
Journal ISSN
1094-2025
1096-6099
1096-6099
Volume Title
17
Publisher
Elsevier BV