Gender Attitudes in the Judiciary: Evidence from U.S. Circuit Courts

Abstract

Do gender attitudes influence interactions with female judges in U.S. Circuit Courts? In this paper, we propose a judge-specific measure of gender attitudes based on use of gender-stereotyped language in the judge’s authored opinions. Exploiting quasi-random assignment of judges to cases and conditioning on judges’ characteristics, we validate the measure showing that higher-slant judges vote more conservatively in gender-related cases. Higher-slant judges interact differently with female colleagues: they are more likely to reverse lower-court decisions if the lower-court judge is a woman than a man, are less likely to assign opinions to female judges, and cite fewer female-authored opinions.

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Reference

Elliott Ash, Daniel L. Chen, and Arianna Ornaghi, “Gender Attitudes in the Judiciary: Evidence from U.S. Circuit Courts”, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, vol. 16, n. 1, January 2024, pp. 314–350.