Lady Justice: The impact of female judges on trials' verdicts in US

Alessandra Foresta

Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of York

Abstract: This work evaluates the role of judges' gender on jury trials verdicts in the US state of North Carolina. My identification strategy is based on judges' rotation across districts and fixed effects. The results indicate that, in trials presided by female judges, juries are more likely to express guilty verdicts. I implement a series of robustness checks (different models' specifications, defendants' characteristics, district sizes, judges' types, judges' experience and workloads) and a series of heterogeneity checks (judges' characteristics, types of crimes and jurors' gender). Finally, I discuss the possible mechanisms behind these findings and I explore the impact of the jury selection process, the role of judges' toughness and the attitudes of women towards courts and sentencing.

Keywords: Gender; Judge; Trials behaviours (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 K10 K40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen, nep-lab and nep-law
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:yor:yorken:22/04

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