The Administrative Cost of Appeal Systems and Error Correction

The performance of appeal systems has been frequently been conditioned by the availability of human and financial resources. Scholars have suggested measures for reducing the financial and administrative burden of appeal tribunals; however, such proposals must be assessed considering their impact on the primigenial objectives pursued by these systems, particularly their capacity to reduce the harm produced by judicial errors. This study assesses diverse options for reducing caseload burdens in an administrative appeal system, including abandoning the prohibition of the Reformatio in Peius (RIP) principle, elevating fees for appealing and introducing subsidies and penalties to defendants. The results show that increasing appeal fees may allow a similar effect on the reduction of caseload burden as abandoning no RIP but at a lower cost in terms of noncorrected errors. The results are robust to different assumptions regarding the informational signals sent by defendants to tribunals during the administrative process.