Abstract
We investigate the efect of ideology on competition and state aid cases decided by the General Court of the European Union. As votes and other common proxies for judicial preferences are unavailable, we develop an alternative measurement approach designed to leverage the knowledge of legal experts. We ask EU competition law experts to rate General Court judges on several dimensions and then use these ratings to construct judicial scores for Europhilia, competition law expertise and business-friendliness. We show that, consistent with research on US courts, the pro-business score of the panel median is a significant predictor of General Court decisions in competition and state aid cases. We find less conclusive evidence for the influence of Europhilia and the rapporteur judge. While contributing new evidence on the link between ideology and adjudication, our analysis suggests that expert ratings constitute a viable and promising alternative in settings where other measurement methods are unavailable.
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