Ben Alarie and Andrew Green, both of U of T, have jointly taken on some terrific empirical work (see here and here and here and here – there’s more but you get the point).  Their latest contribution, “Policy Preferences and Expertise in Canadian Tax Adjudication”, is similarly good fun and worth reading.  In it, they look to appeals from administrative decisions in tax to see whether the type of taxpayer, the taxpayer’s choice about representation, the outcome of the appeal, the geographic source of the appeal, the procedural process at the Tax Court, the type of legislation, the gender of the judge, the government who appointed the judge, or the prior experience of the judge correlated with the outcome and appeal process of the cases.