Political Bias in Court? Lay Judges and Asylum Appeals

År: 2015

Typ av text: Working paper

Publicerad av: Uppsala universitet, ekonomiska institutionen

Språk: Engelska

Författare: Linna Martén

Antal sidor: 43

Tillgänglig på: http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:809784/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Vad texten handlar om 

Texten redogör för en kvantitativ studie som handlar om hur nämndemäns politiska tillhörighet påverkar deras beslut i asylärenden som överklagats till migrationsdomstolarna. Även skillnader i domares beslut tas upp, men ges ingen förklaring. Perioden studerad är 2011-2013 och runt 16 000 fall från migrationsdomstolarna i Stockholm, Göteborg och Malmö utgör datasetet. 

Viktigaste resultat

“The results show that the approval rate is affected by the policy position of the laymen’s political parties. In particular, asylum appeals are more likely to be rejected when laymen from the anti-immigrant party the Swedish Democrats participate, and less likely to be rejected when laymen from the Left Party, the Christian Democrats or the Green Party participate. This indicates that asylum seekers do not receive an impartial trial, and raises concerns that laymen in the courts can compromise the legal security in general.” (abstract)

“the approval rate is around 1.5-3 percentage points higher when laymen from the Left Party, The Green Party or the Christian Democrats participate, whereas it is around 2.5 percentage points lower when laymen from the Swedish Democrats participate, compared to cases where only laymen from the Moderate Party and the Social Democrats participate. Compared to an average approval rate of 0.13, these effects are substantial.” (3)

“I also detect a large variation between the regular judges approval rate, despite the fact that cases are randomly assigned to judges. This suggests that individual judges consistently apply their own interpretation of the law, although the results indicate that even within judges there is room for variation depending on the lay judges’ political affiliation.” (3)

“The standard deviation is 0.11, confirming that there is large variation regarding judges’ leniency toward asylum seekers. The magnitude is comparable to the difference in predicted probability of approval for an asylum seeker from Belarus or Morocco compared to Afghanistan, i.e. countries with completely different conditions.” (20)

“In half of the cases the court committee consists of a majority of women, and every fifth case has a court committee with at least one person with a non-Scandinavian name. The average age is relatively high, at 60 years (in 2011).” (11)

“Moreover, the judge was outvoted 134 times, corresponding to 1,3 % of all asylum cases 2012-2013. In 123 of these appeals the judge wanted to reject the case, whereas all the laymen wanted to approve it.” (13-14)

“An asylum applicant who is unlucky and gets a layman from the Swedish Democrats on the court committee will have a five percentage point lower probability of approval” (23)

“Taken together, this raises concerns about the practice of justice to asylum seekers appellations.” (3-4)

Metoden för studien

Statistisk regressionsanalys

Ev förslag för vidare granskning

Författaren föreslår att man tittar mer på skillnader i domares domar

Summarised by: Josefin Åström