Dynamic Interaction Between State Legislatures and State Courts

Abstract: This paper examines the role of initial conditions in shaping the relationship between state legislatures and state courts. Thirteen American states were settled by France, Spain or Mexico and had operational civil-law courts around the time of acquisition. During this period, civil law and common law differed in their conception of the appropriate balance of power between the legislature and the judiciary. In common law countries, the two were relatively equal, whereas in the civil law countries the legislature was dominant. We find that civil-law and common-law legislatures have behaved differently towards their judiciary in ways that are consistent with these views. In cross section, civil law states selected and retained their judiciaries in ways that led to lower judicial independence and spent less on their courts. To better understand these patterns, we examine the conditions under which states changed their methods of selecting and retaining judges and how legislatures changed budgets following these reforms. Common-law states did not change how they selected and retained the judiciary in periods of above average political competition, whereas civil-law states did. This difference is reinforced when we turn to the budget data. Following a reform, common-law states maintained existing spending levels, while civil-law states decreased spending significantly.