Decisions Made by the Judges: Contributing Factors

 

The following table presents the results concerning the major factors that contributed to the decisions made by the judges. The factor that contributed most strongly to the resolution of the case in favor of the plaintiff was the testimony of the defendant. When the defendant admitted guilt in a criminal case, or agreed with the plaintiff’s demands in a civil case, the judgment was almost certain to be in favor of the plaintiff. When the defendant disagreed with the plaintiff, the plaintiff on average won only 40% of the time.  The second most important factor was the testimony of the witnesses.  The more witnesses in favor of the plaintiff were involved in the case, the more likely was the plaintiff to win. Two other factors that seemed to matter for the outcome were the family relationship between the litigants and the type of the case. Although statistical significance of these findings is lower, the tendency was that plaintiffs suing their family members were less likely to win than the plaintiffs suing defendants that were not related to them by kin. Also, plaintiffs in the civil cases were on average more likely to win than the plaintiffs in the criminal cases.  Another finding is the seeming lack of discrimination based on gender or literacy of the parties. Being illiterate or being a female does not seem to hurt (or help) the plaintiff’s case. Presence or absence of documentary evidence did not have a statistically significant effect on the plaintiffs’ success rates or on the evaluation of other evidence (testimony of the defendant and those of the witnesses). The tendency of documents to enhance other kinds of testimony is visible in whole case records where documents are cited in verdicts. However, statistical evaluation of the role of documents in decisions is complicated by the fact that the dataset does not indicate which side presented the document or which party’s case a document supported. The calculations below show that the weight judges attached to oral testimony did not seem to depend on the sole presence or absence of documentary evidence. Aspects of these findings are discussed in Chapter 6 and elsewhere in Russian Peasants Go to Court. Both the role of documents and the significance of the difference of outcomes between family and non-family cases are subjects for further study.

 

Predicting Success for the Plaintiff, Civil and Criminal Cases, All Years

Logistic Regression Results

 

Plaintiff’s Success

Coef.

Std. Err.

P>|z|

95% Confidence

Interval

Plaintiff’s Gender

0.7961

0.9412

0.398

-1.0486

2.6409

Defendant’s Gender

-0.9121

0.9019

0.312

-2.6798

0.8555

Plaintiff’s Literacy

0.6987

0.8184

0.393

-.9054

2.3028

Defendant’s Literacy

-1.3038

0.8562

0.128

-2.9819

0.3744

Defendant’s Testimony

1.9340

0.7885

0.014**

0.3886

3.4794

Defendant’s Testimony in the presence of  Documentary Evidence

-0.7723

0.7644

0.312

-2.2705

0.7260

Testimony of the Witnesses

1.7051

0.6769

0.012**

0.3784

3.0317

Testimony of the Witnesses in the presence of Documentary Evidence

-0.6716

0.8082

0.406

-2.2556

0.9123

Litigants’ Family Relationship

-2.1172

1.1247

0.060*

-4.3215

0.0871

Type of the Case (Civil/Criminal)

1.7238

0.8293

0.038**

0.0985

3.3491

Constant

1.6696

1.2770

0.191

-0.8332

4.1724

N

76

LR chi2(9)

40.10

Prob > chi2

0.0000

Pseudo R2

0.4008

 

 

The following coding of the variables was used:

 

Plaintiff’s Success:                              1              plaintiff succeeded

0                     plaintiff failed

 

Plaintiff’s Gender:                                1              female

0                     male

 

Defendant’s Gender:                           1              female

0                     male

 

Plaintiff’s Literacy:                               1              literate

                                                                0              illiterate

 

Defendant’s Literacy:                          1              literate

                                                                0              illiterate

 

Defendant’s Testimony:                     1              in favor of the plaintiff (admits guilt, or agrees with the suit)

                                                                0              unclear or partially agrees with the plaintiff

                                                                -1             against the plaintiff (not guilty, or disagrees with the suit)

 

Testimony of the Witnesses              for each witness, the testimony is coded as

                                                                1              in favor of the plaintiff

                                                                0              unclear, or not applicable

                                                                -1             in favor of the defendant

 

Testimony of the Witnesses is a compound measure ranging from -3 to 3 and computed as a sum of the testimonies of the first three witnesses (coded as 0 if no witnesses were involved)

 

Litigants’ Family Relationship           1              family members

0                     not related to each other

 

Type of the Case                                  1              civil case

0                     criminal case

 

 

Documentary Evidence                       1              documents involved in the case

                                                                0              no documents involved