Judicial Mechanism Design

This paper studies the design of welfare-maximizing criminal judicial processes. We identify properties of the generically unique optimal processes for two notions of welfare distinguished by their treatment of deterrence. These properties shed new light on features of the criminal justice system in the United States, from the prevalence of extreme, binary verdicts in conjunction with plea bargains to the use of jury instructions and an adversarial system, all of which emerge as the result of informational, commitment, and incentive arguments.