Revisiting DEA application in the judiciary: assessing macro-efficiency of the Polish district court system in the 21st century

Purpose: The objective of this article is to investigate the technical efficiency of Poland's district court system from 2002 to 2021, employing a constrained variant of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) on appropriately processed time series data. Design/methodology/approach: Different DEA models were employed to estimate the technical efficiency of this system, beginning with classical CCR DEA and super-efficiency DEA. After identifying crucial shortcomings in the outcomes produced by these two methods, a novel procedure based on constrained DEA was proposed to address and overcome these limitations in the context of evaluating judicial efficiency using DEA. Findings: Applying super-efficiency DEA to a small sample does not yield sound or fully interpretable outcomes regarding the estimated scores of individual DMUs, despite seemingly increasing the variability of these scores. It is only when adequate restrictions are imposed on both the input and output weights—price and virtual alike—that one can obtain results free from the significant imperfections commonly associated with the classical DEA method in the context of judicial efficiency. Research limitations/implications: Ignoring the inherent shortcomings of classical or super efficiency DEA can lead to significant distortions in the estimated ratings assigned to individual DMUs. Practical implications: Policy recommendations derived from traditional unconstrained DEA, intended to enhance the actual efficiency of specific DMUs, might ultimately be misleading. Originality/value: The research contributes to the existing body of knowledge on judicial efficiency in at least two significant ways. First, unlike previous studies, it focuses on a single DMU (the first-instance court system) over a long 20-year period, allowing conclusions drawn from this investigation to be interpreted within the context of systemic macro-level efficiency over time. Secondly, and more importantly, the article highlights the inherent weaknesses of classical DEA, which cast reasonable doubt on the quality and interpretability of the results obtained using this method. To address these issues, the article introduces—for the first time in the field of judicial efficiency research—a procedure specifically designed to overcome these limitations. Keywords: efficiency, DEA, weight constraints, judiciary. Category of the paper: Research article.