Do Judges Favor Their Own Ethnicity and Gender? : Evidence from Kenya
Evidence from high-income countries suggests that judges often exhibit in-group bias, favoring litigants that share an identity with the judge. However, there is little evidence on this phenomenon from the Global South. Collecting the available uni...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Washington, DC: World Bank
2022
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/114171646663154536/Do-Judges-Favor-Their-Own-Ethnicity-and-Gender-Evidence-from-Kenya http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37108 |
| Summary: | Evidence from high-income countries
suggests that judges often exhibit in-group bias, favoring
litigants that share an identity with the judge. However,
there is little evidence on this phenomenon from the Global
South. Collecting the available universe of High Court
decisions in Kenya, this paper leverages the random
assignment of cases to judges to evaluate the existence of
in-group bias along gender and ethnic lines. It finds that,
relative to a baseline win rate of 43 percent, defendants
are 4 percentage points more likely to win if they share the
judge's gender and 5 percentage points more likely to
win if they share the judge~^!!^s ethnicity. The paper finds
that the written judgements are on average shorter and less
likely to be cited when defendants who are of the same
gender or ethnicity as the judge win their case. This is
consistent with in-group biased decisions being of lower
quality. In addition, the findings show that female
defendants are less likely to win the case if the judge
exhibits stereotypical or negative attitudes towards women
in their writings. |
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