Explaining Cross-Country Differences in the Number of Judges per Capita

It is common to focus on the number of professional judges per capita when assessing the need for judges in various countries. The EU Rule of Law Report is just one example of this tendency. This simple indicator does not, however, consider that the demand for justice in different countries may vary quite a lot because of socio-economic factors. This paper seeks to identify such factors and applies them to produce an alternative indicator for judicial need.

The alternative indicator does not depend upon the number of cases reported (to European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice – CEPEJ) by any country. Furthermore, the indicator does not (naively) assume that population size is the only variable that matters when assessing the number of judges. The approach recognizes that social, demographic, political and economic variables have a substantial impact on judicial workload, and thus the need for judges.

Even with this “improved” comparative measure of judicial needs, however, any serious assessment of judicial needs will have to go much deeper into the analysis of the specific characteristics of the judicial system in question, since the European judicial systems come in so many variants.