The Judicial Signaling Game: How Judges Shape Their Dockets

Judges are not passive receivers of their agendas, as they were traditionally perceived. Instead, judges can shape their dockets by encouraging potential litigants to bring particular cases or make specifi c arguments. This encouragement takes the form of judges signaling their own positions on an issue as well as their colleagues’ expected support. This process is modeled as a signaling game, with both separating and pooling equilibria resulting. The existence of pooling equilibria is of particular interest, as it suggests that some judges have an incentive to misrepresent the chances of success of a case in order to induce desired litigation.