How Personal Motivations Affect Judges’ Decisions

Neither legal academics nor social scientists analyse judging solely through the ‘law versus politics’ dichotomy. They have instead expanded their theoretical toolkit to include four other approaches to judging, in addition to standard legalistic (law) and attitudinal (politics) accounts (all of which are covered in this Handbook). Here we focus on the labour market model, which emphasizes personal motivations for judicial choice, especially (i) job satisfaction, (ii) external satisfactions, (iii) leisure, (iv) salary, and (v) promotion. This chapter provides a brief introduction to the labour market model, with emphasis on the importance of the five key personal motivations. It then considers the motivations separately. For each of the key motivations, the chapter identifies the relevant literature and offers proposals for new research.