Independence, Expertise and Ideology in Judicial Decision Making. Comparing Bankruptcy Panels and Federal District Court Judges

Although federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction over bankruptcy cases, once a petition is filed the matter is referred to the Bankruptcy Court, an Article One court of limited jurisdiction and limited judicial independence. Among proceedings the Bankruptcy court can adjudicate are core proceedings involving substantive rights under the bankruptcy code. In these proceedings a party may appeal the final judgment of the Bankruptcy court judge to the Federal District Court or in some circuits to a Bankruptcy Appellate Panel (BAP) consisting of three bankruptcy judges. The difference in adjudication of these appeals provides a natural experiment to determine differences in decision making between non expert life tenured Federal District Court judges and expert, but non independent Bankruptcy Court judges. This builds on other works that have examined specialized court decision making (Stuadt et. al. 2003; Schneider, 2001, 2002; Howard, 2006, 2008; Unah 1997, 1998; Curry and Miller 2008) but builds on this literature by allowing direct comparison to a life tenured generalized court to determine the extent that judicial decisions are influenced by independence, expertise and ideology.