JUDICIAL LEGITIMACY AS A REPEATED GAME

An independent judiciary faces the problem of how to restrain high-cou rt judges from indulging their personal whims. One restraint is the de sire of judges to influence future judges. To do so, judges may have t o maintain their own or the system's legitimacy by restraining their o wn behavior, This situation can be viewed as an equilibrium of an infi nitely repeated game. Such a game has many equilibria, some of which a re Pareto superior to others. In some equilibria, self-interested judg es are responsible even without the threat of external penalties.