Judicial Efficiency in the Lower Federal Courts: Published and Unpublished Opinions

Abstract

The decision to publish selective cases is primarily driven by a desire to control growth in case law and concerns of judicial efficiency. That is, limiting opinion publication to those opinions that establish law or have precedential value increases judicial efficiency. However, little empirical research has been designed to test whether this reform does increase judicial efficiency. This research investigates whether unpublished judicial opinions actually take less time for both District Court judges and Courts of Appeals panels to hear and dispose of a case. We provide an analysis of time to disposition in all (published and unpublished) Forest Service land management cases filed in federal court from 1989-2009. Although publication status is the dependent variable of interest, several control variables including ideological, gender and ethnic diversity, caseload, circuit location and judicial vacancies are included in an applied survival analysis model to determine which case, judicial, and court variables may have the greatest impact on time to disposition in the lower federal courts. Our findings indicate that publication status does significantly affect time to disposition in the Court of Appeals, with published opinions increasing the time to disposition by 44%. Additionally, although the rules concerning the citation of unpublished opinions have changed during the time frame of our study, we find that this has not affected the significant difference in time to disposition between unpublished and published opinions. At the district court level, our findings indicate that publication status does not significantly affect time to disposition.