Gunnar Grendstad’s research while affiliated with University of Bergen and other places

In this paper we examine the impact of small group forces on case processing time on a high court. Extending previous research that treats case processing time as an indicator of the extent of bargaining and compromise among justices, we adopt a comparative perspective and analyze the disparities in the amount of time reserved to argue a case and the amount of time a merits panel takes to decide it. We expect that these disparities are influenced by a host of small group forces, including leadership styles, reference group identities, and professional backgrounds present in the group, levels of experience with the deliberative process, and heterogeneity in the justices’ opinions. To test our expectations, we estimate an ordinary least squares model on all cases decided on the merits by five-justice panels on the Norwegian Supreme Court from 2008 to 2023. Our findings largely lend support to our hypotheses. Moreover, we find that the relative speed of case processing on the Norwegian Supreme Court is influenced by a number of case attributes and institutional factors, of which the Court’s workload exerts the largest effect in magnitude.

Which judicial leaders are more successful in achieving consensus? This article examines the impact of the leadership of presiding justices on consensus formation on the Norwegian Supreme Court where cases are distributed randomly to two parallel decisional panels. We hypothesize that presiding justices with certain characteristics (e.g., gender and chief justice), when in charge of the decision‐making process, are more willing and better able to forge consensus, which could lead to greater respect for courts and the rule of law. We account for a variety of characteristics of the justices, as well as several conditions under which the cases were decided. The results confirm that both chief justices and female justices, when operating as the presiding justice of the panel, are significantly more likely to steer the case towards a unanimous decision as compared to their fellow justices. Legal academics serving as presiding justices had no discernable impact on consensus formation. The results provide evidence outside the American context that chief justices and women justices have the ability to achieve greater consensus. As such, diversity and appointments have consequences for judicial leadership and for consensus formation on a court.

Mens undersøkelser viser at lagmannsrettene ikke innfrir Stortingets måltall om tre måneders gjennomsnittlig saksbehandlingstid i straffesaker, mangler vi fortsatt kunnskap om årsakene til overskridelsene. I denne artikkelen diskuterer og analyserer vi konkret hvordan sakskompleksitet påvirker tidsbruken i straffesaker i lagmannsrettene. Analysene bekrefter at straffesakens kompleksitet påvirker saksbehandlingstiden. Spesielt fører økning i antall parter og tolker til lengre saksbehandlingstid. Bevisanker i såkalte seksårssaker tar imidlertid kortere tid etter avviklingen i 2018 av lagretteordningen. Saksbehandlingstiden varierer likeså betydelig mellom lagmannsrettene.

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Scandinavian supreme courts have been described as deferential to the elected branches of government and reluctant to exercise their limited review powers. However, in recent years, these courts have increasingly decided cases impacting public policy making. Yet we lack comprehensive, comparative knowledge about the legal rules and judicial practices that govern the policymaking role of courts in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Addressing this gap, this article develops an analytical framework and systematically compares the evolving laws, rules, and practices that regulate the supreme courts’ constitutional review powers and court administration, the appointment and tenure of judges, access to the supreme courts, and their decision-making procedures over the last fifty years. The comparison reveals notable institutional differences across these judiciaries and finds that judicial expansion in Scandinavia has coincided with institutional changes that enhance judicial autonomy. This suggests that consequential reforms of domestic origin may have played a larger part in this development than previously appreciated.

What is the effect of gender on the deliberative process of judging? Drawing on previous research on female leaders’ inclination to foster a more inclusive and collaborative decision-making process, we argue that decision making takes more time in a collegial court when female justices preside over decisional panels. Analyzing an original data set on cases decided by the Norwegian Supreme Court between 2008 and 2019, we find that when a woman is the presiding justice, the duration of case disposition time increases. This effect, however, persists for only eight days. Our finding suggests that institutional practices take effect over gendered effects.

While high courts with fixed time for oral arguments deprive researchers of the opportunity to extract temporal variance, courts that apply the “accordion model” institutional design and adjust the time for oral arguments according to the perceived complexity of a case are a boon for research that seeks to validate case complexity well ahead of the courts’ opinion writing. We analyze an original data set of all 1,402 merits decisions of the Norwegian Supreme Court from 2008 to 2018 where the justices set time for oral arguments to accommodate the anticipated difficulty of the case. Our validation model empirically tests whether and how attributes of a case associated with ex ante complexity are linked with time allocated for oral arguments. Cases that deal with international law and civil law, have several legal players, are cross-appeals from lower courts are indicative of greater case complexity. We argue that these results speak powerfully to the use of case attributes and/or the time reserved for oral arguments as ex ante measures of case complexity. To enhance the external validity of our findings, future studies should examine whether these results are confirmed in high courts with similar institutional design for oral arguments. Subsequent analyses should also test the degree to which complex cases and/or time for oral arguments have predictive validity on more divergent opinions among the justices and on the time courts and justices need to render a final opinion.