Court delay frustrates economic behavior. This paper examines the nexus between the case disposition time and the availability of prior court decisions for the civil law. We model litigation as a rent-seeking game, and find that prior court decisions curb strategic behavior in similar cases. Thus, the excessive use of party resources in litigation, such as time, is reduced if prior decisions clarify the interpretation of the law. Using judge-level data, we provide empirical evidence on a potential role of such ‘precedents’ for case disposition time in a civil law country. Our results show that the availability of prior decisions contributes to a significant reduction in disposition time. Moreover, the reduction in the duration of trials becomes stronger when the stock of previous court decisions grows. We conclude that the utilization of prior judicial decisions plays a crucial role for the efficiency of justice also in civil law countries.

法院的延误使经济行为受挫。本文研究了案件处理时间与大陆法系法院在先判决之间的关系。我们将诉讼建模为寻租游戏，并发现法院的先前裁决会遏制类似案件中的战略行为。因此，如果事先的决定明确了对法律的解释，则可以减少诉讼中当事人资源的过度使用，例如时间。使用法官级别的数据，我们提供了经验证据，证明此类“先例”在民法国家案件处置时间中的潜在作用。我们的结果表明，事先决定的可用性大大减少了处置时间。此外，随着以前法院判决的增加，审判时间的减少变得更加强烈。