The extent to which judicial outcomes depend on judges' identities is a central question in
multiethnic societies. Past work on the impact of the racial composition of appellate courts
has narrowly focused on civil rights cases in the United States. We expand this literature by
testing for ethnicity‐based panel effects in criminal appeals in Israel. Using randomness in
the assignment of cases to panels, we find that appeal outcomes for Jewish defendants are
independent of panels' ethnic composition. By contrast, panel composition is highly …

The extent to which judicial outcomes depend on judges' identities is a central question in
multi-ethnic societies. Past work on the impact of the racial composition of appellate courts
has narrowly focused on civil rights cases in the USA. We expand this literature by testing for
ethnicity-based panel effects in criminal appeals in Israel. Using randomness in the
assignment of cases to panels, we find that appeal outcomes for Jewish defendants are
independent of panels' ethnic composition. By contrast, panel composition is highly …