The EU as an Effective Trade Power? Strategic Choice of Judicial Candidates in the Context of the World Trade Organization

Drawing on the European Union (EU) foreign policy literature on effectiveness, this article studies how the European Union chooses judges to serve on the World Trade Organization’s key judicial institution: the Appellate Body. Conceptually, the article differentiates between effectiveness in representation and effectiveness in impact. The article shows how delegation to the European Commission has increased the strategic agenda-setting power for championing its preferred candidates. The article further compares European and US practice in nominating candidates. Overall, the article finds that effectiveness in representation has increased over time. In terms of effectiveness in impact, the article shows how the international environment conditions the EU’s influence. The article also exposes the difficulties of studying the effectiveness of EU external relations due to the peculiar decision-making processes dominant in judicial bodies.

Agents, Trustees, and International Courts: Nomination and Appointment of Judicial Candidates in the WTO Appellate Body

Scholars have increasingly theorized, and debated, the decision by states to create and delegate authority to international courts, as well as the subsequent autonomy and behavior of those courts, with principal–agent and trusteeship models disagreeing on the nature and extent of states’ influence on international judges. This article formulates and tests a set of principal–agent hypotheses about the ways in which, and the conditions under which, member states are able use their powers of judicial nomination and appointment to influence the endogenous preferences of international judges. The empirical analysis surveys the record of all judicial appointments to the Appellate Body (AB) of the World Trade Organization over a 15-year period. We present a view of an AB appointment process that, far from representing a pure search for expertise, is deeply politicized and offers member-state principals opportunities to influence AB members ex ante and possibly ex post. We further demonstrate that the AB nomination process has become progressively more politicized over time as member states, responding to earlier and controversial AB decisions, became far more concerned about judicial activism and more interested in the substantive opinions of AB candidates, systematically championing candidates whose views on key issues most closely approached their own, and opposing candidates perceived to be activist or biased against their substantive preferences. Although specific to the WTO, our theory and findings have implications for the judicial politics of a large variety of global and regional international courts and tribunals.

Legal Change: Integrating Selective Litigation, Judicial Preferences, and Precedent

The claim that the common law displays an economic logic is a centerpiece of the positive economic theory of law. A key question in this literature is whether this outcome is due to the conscious efforts of judges, or the result of invisible hand processes. This paper develops a model in which to two effects combine to determine the direction of legal change. The main conclusions are, first, that judicial bias can prevent the law from evolving toward efficiency if the fraction of judges biased against the efficient rule is large enough; and second, that precedent affects the rate of legal change but not its direction.

Sentencing Guidelines, Judicial Discretion, And Social Values

This paper studies the institutional structure of criminal sentencing, focusing on the interaction between legislatures, which set sentencing ranges ex ante, and judges, who choose actual sentences from within those ranges ex post. The key question concerns the optimal degree of judicial discretion, given the sequential nature of the process and the possibly divergent interests of legislatures and judges regarding the social function of criminal punishment. The enactment of sentencing reform in the 1970s and 80s provides both a context for the model and an opportunity to evaluate its conclusions.

Te conoz co Mascarita: Prácticas de identificación en el mundo judicial penal. En: Avá, nº 12

Si la “cuestión de la identidad” atraviesa todos los procedimientos judiciales, no siempre lo hace de la misma manera. Diversas son las formas en que se identifican a las personas así como los modos en que se conceptualizan y se llevan adelante esas formas de identificación y diversos son también los usos que se les asignan. Así pues, este trabajo pretende reflexionar sobre algunas prácticas de identificación, tales como la “rueda de reconocimiento” y otras, que tienen lugar en el mundo de la Justicia Penal. Interesa dar cuenta de cómo la “cuestión de la identidad”, la necesidad de determinar la identidad de las personas, atraviesa los procedimientos judiciales penales, sirviéndose para ello de diferentes materiales y adoptando usos y sentidos diversos.

Análisis económico de la brecha tecnológica en la producción de uva de mesa sanjuanina

Este estudio se realizó en una zona productora de uva de mesa de la provincia de San Juan, que incluyó los departamentos Zonda, Ullum, Albardón, Pocito, Caucete, 25 de Mayo, San Martín y 9 de Julio. De 335 explotaciones existentes, según la base obtenida a partir del CNA 2002, se tomó una muestra de 83 casos, para 2 sigmas de intervalo de confianza y 10 % de error. Los objetivos planteados fueron: determinar el nivel tecnológico para este rubro productivo, medir el grado de severidad de un grupo de restricciones asociadas a la incorporación de tecnología y estimar el beneficio económico alcanzado por el cierre de la brecha tecnológica. De este modo, se plantearon tres dimensiones de estudio, evaluando oportunamente las variables asociadas, de acuerdo a los estudios preeliminares. Los datos fueron procesados con el programa SPSS 11. Se realizó, para el estudio de la primera dimensión, análisis de componentes principales, escalamiento multidimensional y análisis de conglomerados no jerárquicos y en dos fases. En el caso de la segunda dimensión, se utilizaron tablas de contingencia con los estadísticos chi-cuadrado y t de student. Para estimar el beneficio económico alcanzado por el cierre de la brecha tecnológica, se utilizó un programa de simulación SIGMA 2.0. Se encontró la existencia de dos niveles tecnológicos dentro del rubro productivo uva de mesa de exportación, en donde existen inconvenientes referidos a la carencia de infraestructura, falta de rentabilidad asociada a los ingresos de la alternativa tecnológica, incompatibilidad entre los intereses al crédito que se puede acceder y las ganancias de la alternativa tecnológica y, por último, falta de planificación empresarial. Del cierre de la brecha tecnológica, en un escenario positivo, de cinco años, se concluye que el beneficio social medido como excedente bruto de la producción, puede ascender a casi $ 27 millones.