司法中的“乡愁”——法官是否偏爱老乡

The Nostalgia in Judicature:Does Judges Favor ‘Lao Xiang’ in China

本文在理论和经验上揭示了法官在司法中可能存在源自身份认同而偏爱老乡的行为。基于手工收集的商事诉讼案件与主审法官匹配的微观数据,研究发现,虽然法官与原告是老乡对原告胜诉的概率和原告负担的诉讼费比例没有显著影响,但法官与被告是老乡显著降低了原告胜诉的概率,并提高了原告负担的诉讼费比例。这一结果在使用不同的估计方法以及排除了法官地域偏爱的情形中都是稳健的,表明法官在司法中存在明显偏爱老乡的行为。同时,本文并未发现法官偏爱老乡的行为会随法官学历、等级和年龄而发生显著变化的经验证据,意味着法官源自身份认同而偏爱老乡的行为可能并不会随着法官素质的提高而弱化。本文为优化营商环境和推进法治建设提供了重要线索和政策启示,并拓展了司法偏爱问题的研究视角,丰富了对源自身份认同而可能存在的偏爱问题的研究文献,有助于更全面地理解和观察宗族文化在当代经济社会中的影响。

The fellow-townsman(lao xiang)is the continuation of the clan culture rooted in the traditional local society,is the social network that the individual is connected by the hometown after breaking away from the original acquaintance society and entering the colonial society.This paper,for the first time in theory and experience,reveals that the judge may have the behavior of favoring his fellow-townsman because of his identity in the judicial system.Using the micro data matching the judge and the lawsuit case,we found that the judge and the plaintiff were fellow-townsman,and had no significant effect on the probability of winning the lawsuit and the ratio of litigation costs borne by the plaintiff.But the judge and the defendant are fellow-townsman,significantly reduced the probability of the plaintiff’s victory,and increased the plaintiff’s burden of litigation costs ratio.This result is robust in the case of using different methods and excluding the geographical bias of judges,which shows that there is significant judicial favoritism towards judges’fellow-townsman in the judicial process,but the judge was only favoritism to the defendant fellows,not to the plaintiff fellow.Meanwhile,the favoritism of the judge towards the defendant fellows does not differ significantly depending on the judge’s age,education and grade,which means that the judge’s favoritism to the fellow-townsman may not diminish as the quality of the judge improves.