This paper provides a quantitative analysis of the eects of the early law-andeconomics movement on the U.S. judiciary. We focus on the Manne Economics
Institute for Federal Judges, an intensive economics course that trained almost
half of federal judges between 1976 and 1999. Using the universe of published
opinions in U.S. Circuit Courts and 1 million District Court criminal sentencing
decisions, we estimate the within-judge eect of Manne program attendance.
Selection into attendance was limited  the program was popular across judges
from all backgrounds, was regularly oversubscribed, and admitted judges on a
rst-come rst-served basis  and results are robust to a variety of automatically selected covariates predicting the timing of attendance. We nd that
after attending economics training, participating judges use more economics
language in their opinions, rule against regulatory agencies more often, and
impose more/longer criminal sentences. The Manne program played a role in
reinforcing the policy consequences of the law-and-economics movement via its
inuence on U.S. federal judges.