Judicial Subversion: The Effects of Political Power on Court Outcomes

Are politicians in power treated more leniently in court? We show that Brazilian mayoral candidates charged with misconduct are 65 percent less likely to be convicted if they narrowly win the election. Politicians play no direct role in the judges’ careers, suggesting that formal independence does not completely insulate the judiciary from political influence. The effect is driven by districts with few judges and by judges with higher career instability. ∗Lambais: Department of Economics, University of Brasilia, Campus Darcy Ribeiro, Brasília, DF, 70910-900, Brazil. Corresponding author: Sigstad, Department of Economics, University of Oslo, Moltke Moes vei 31, 0851 Oslo, Norway (e-mail: henrik.sigstad@econ.uio.no, phone: +4799322009). We are grateful to Alberto Alesina, Edward Glaeser, and Melissa Dell for excellent guidance. Special thanks to Luis Fabiano de Assis and Bruno Bodart. We thank Jusbrasil for help with the Diários data and André Assumpção for sharing data. Also thanks to Saulo Benchimol for research assistance and to Rolf Aaberge, Daron Acemoglu, Priscila Beltrami, Fernando Bizzarro, Taylor Boas, Washington Brito, Filipe Campante, Fabrício Fernandes de Castro, Alexandre Samy de Castro, Moya Chin, João Falcão, Eliana la Ferrara, Leopoldo Fergusson, Isabela Ferrari, Ray Fisman, Felipe Fontes, Siddharth George, Daniel Hidalgo, Moshe Hoffman, Liana Issa, Louis Kaplow, Horacio Larreguy, Jetson Leder-Luis, Debora Maliki, Mateo Montenegro, Nathan Nunn, Tzachi Raz, Mark Ramseyer, Ivan Ribeiro, Carlos Sanchez Martinez, Raul Sanchez de la Sierra, Andrei Shleifer, Holger Spamann, Matt Stephenson, Anderson Summa, Rafael Di Tella, Clémence Tricaud, Erez Yoeli, Luciana Zaffalon, and numerous seminar participants at Harvard, MIT, RIDGE/LACEAPEG, SBE, SIOE, U. Oslo, U. Brasilia, UCB, EESP-FGV, and TRF2. We acknowledge the support of the Haddad Foundation, through the Harvard-Brazil Cities Research Grant Program of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.