I recently had the opportunity to discuss criminal law and plea bargaining with a group of judges from Turkey.

There is no plea bargaining in Turkey, and there apparently is some discussion about whether allowing plea bargaining in Turkey would be an improvement in that nation’s criminal justice system. In the United States, there are many who see plea bargaining as a necessary evil, and others who simply see it as evil, as well as those who see alternative dispute resolution (plea bargaining) as a healthy aspect of civil, family and criminal law.

It is in this context that Yehonatan Givati’s (Hebrew University of Jerusalem – Faculty of Law) article, Legal Institutions and Social Values: Theory and Evidence from Plea Bargaining Regimes (Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Forthcoming), seems interesting no matter where you fall on the spectrum.

Here is the abstract:

How do social values shape legal institutions across countries? To address this question I focus on one important legal institution — the use of plea bargaining in criminal cases. I develop a model in which the optimal scope of plea bargaining depends on social values. Specifically, a lower social emphasis on ensuring that innocent individuals are not punished, and a greater social emphasis on ensuring that guilty individuals are punished, lead to a greater use of plea bargaining. Using unique cross-country data on social preferences for punishing the innocent versus letting the guilty go free, as well as an original coding of plea bargaining regimes across countries, I obtain results that are consistent with the model.