Gender Attitudes in the Judiciary: Evidence from US Circuit Courts

Elliott Ash, Daniel L. Chen and Arianna Ornaghi

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2024, vol. 16, issue 1, 314-50

Abstract: Do gender attitudes influence interactions with female judges in US 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.

JEL-codes: D91 J16 K41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Gender attitudes in the judiciary: evidence from U.S. circuit courts (2024)
Working Paper: Gender Attitudes in the Judiciary: Evidence from U.S. Circuit Courts (2021)
Working Paper: Gender Attitudes in the Judiciary:Evidence from U.S. Circuit Courts (2020)
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DOI: 10.1257/app.20210435

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