Measuring Judges' Time Expenditure

This chapter focuses on judges’ time expenditure, primarily exploring theories and methods to overcome the case-judge imbalance from the perspective of judicial staffing. To scientifically demonstrate the existence of “too many cases, too few judges” and achieve efficient allocation of court human resources, it is essential to rigorously examine and accurately measure how judges spend their time. Based on the actual situation in Chinese courts, this chapter proposes a five-tier framework of “Ladder Diagram of Chinese Judges’ Time Expenditure” illustrating the hierarchy of time expenditure among Chinese judges, and introduces methodologies along with practical cases for measuring both absolute and relative time investment in judicial work.