Professional Pathway and Judicial Decision-Making: Evidence from a Hybrid Appointment System

Abstract Using 4,459 bail applications registered in 2023–2024 (some decided in 2025) by 34 judges of the Delhi High Court, we document a robust descriptive association between professional pathway and bail outcomes. Service judges grant bail at lower rates than Bar judges, conditional on observed case characteristics. The association is visible when each judge receives equal weight, remains negative throughout leave-one-judge-out analyses, and survives judge-level finite-sample inference, timing and public-roster controls, common-support restrictions, alternative sample definitions, and sensitivity to the text-coding procedure. The relationship also varies across case contexts: it widens in matters involving a deceased victim and narrows following a prior bail rejection. These patterns describe heterogeneity in the pathway-outcome association but do not identify its mechanism. Among granted applications, Service judges do not impose uniformly stricter release conditions, suggesting that the observed difference appears primarily at the grant-or-deny margin. Because this is an observational study and professional pathway varies across a limited number of judges, we interpret the results as a robust association rather than a causal pathway effect. The evidence does not distinguish selection, professional experience, institutional socialization, ongoing career incentives, or other pathway-correlated characteristics.