Law, Economics, and Judicial Systems Open access Peer reviewed

Justice Good as Random?

Niklas Hüther, Kristoph Kleiner

The Journal of Finance | Sep 22, 2026

Abstract

Abstract

ABSTRACT The random assignment of judges promotes fairness and underpins causal identification across the social sciences. Analyzing Chapter 11 bankruptcies, we find sophisticated parties “judge‐shop”: relative to secured hedge fund creditors, cases involving unsecured hedge fund creditors and equity holders are assigned judges with lower past conversion rates and higher unsecured recovery rates. Experienced legal counsel similarly influences assignment. Because judges are not assigned consecutive large cases, knowledgeable parties can judge‐shop by timing the filing date. We develop a method to measure the resulting bias and demonstrate the need for controls and bounded instrumental variable specifications in judge/examiner designs.

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Authors

Researchers on this paper

Niklas Hüther

first | ORCID 0000-0001-6209-5189

Kristoph Kleiner

last | Astrophysique, Instrumentation et Modélisation

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Citation

BibTeX

@article{Hther2026Justice,
  title = {Justice Good as Random?},
  author = {Niklas Hüther and Kristoph Kleiner},
  journal = {The Journal of Finance},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1111/jofi.70081},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1111/jofi.70081}
}

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