Litigation is costly because information is not free. Given that information is costly and perfect information prohibitively costly, courts will occasionally err. Finally, the fact that information is costly implies an unavoidable degree of informational asymmetry between disputants. This paper presents a model of the civil justice system that incorporates these features and probes its implications for compliance with the law, efficiency of law, accuracy in adjudication, trial outcome statistics, and the evolution of legal standards. The model’s claims are applied to and tested against the relevant empirical and legal literature.

中文翻译：

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信息成本和民事司法系统

诉讼是昂贵的，因为信息不是免费的。鉴于信息成本高昂，而完美信息的成本高得令人望而却步，法院偶尔会犯错。最后，信息成本高昂的事实意味着争论者之间不可避免地存在一定程度的信息不对称。本文提出了一个包含这些特征的民事司法系统模型，并探讨了它对遵守法律、法律效率、裁决准确性、审判结果统计和法律标准演变的影响。该模型的主张适用于相关的实证和法律文献并进行了测试。