Sentencing in the Czech Republic: An Empirical Investigation

Sentencing in the Czech Republic: An Empirical Investigation Abstract Sentencing is in many respects still terra incognita. This holds true especially for other countries than common law ones and those in the Western and Northern Europe. This dissertation thus empirically studies sentencing practices in the Czech Republic using quantitative methods. It is composed of four articles focusing on various sentencing issues: Firstly, on the influence of judicial experience on sentencing using longitudinal data analyzing judges' trajectories from 2008 onward. It shows that increasing experience reduces inter-judge disparity. Secondly, on analyzing previously underappreciated measure to achieve policy change: Informal authority of the supreme institutions. In 2016 the Prosecutor General's Office and the Supreme Court organized several meetings and seminars for prosecutors and judges in order to persuade them to impose more fines. This paper illustrates that these informal tools might have been underappreciated as they are highly effective. The third paper is dedicated to studying a particular extra-legal characteristics influencing sentencing in Prague: The weather. It builds both on psychological literature showing that weather influences mood and mood often impacts behavior and decision-making and on previous US..