A data-driven look at the devastating efficacy of a far-right judge-education program

More than 40% of US federal judges have attended Manne seminars, a notionally "bipartisan" educational conference presented by a Florida "Law and Economics" institute whose invited ideological allies explained to judges why pollution is good for minorities (polluted neighborhoods are cheaper and therefore affordable by poor people), unions are bad, monopolies are economically efficient, discrimination in punishment is economically efficient, insider trading is economically efficient, and so on.

The Manne seminars also included high-profile "liberal" economists as well, but they were asked to lecture in domains that were outside of their expertise. It was rare for rebuttals to the nutty Law and Econ ideas to be presented by economists who studied the subjects under discussion.

Using Freedom of Information Act requests, a group of academics got a list of the judges who attended the Manne seminars, then used "cutting edge econometrics and natural language processing" to analyze the judges' rulings, to see whether the Manne seminars actually changed the tenor of justice in America.

The short answer is that the Manne seminars were devastatingly effective: "we find that Manne attendees subsequently are more likely to rule against regulatory agencies, for example the EPA and NLRB. Next we look at criminal sentencing in the district courts. We find that Manne attendance is associated with harsher prison sentences imposed."

The program has a recognized conservative bias, yet the attending judges are effusive in their praise regardless of ideological standpoint. What is the impact on observed judge decisions? We focus on two agencies the Law and Economics movement specifically criticized: the National Labor Relations Board and the Environmental Protection Agency.