Article

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

Daniel L. Chen, and Arianna Ornaghi

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.

Keywords

Gender attitudes; judiciary; stereotypes; NLP;

JEL codes

  • J70: General
  • J16: Economics of Gender • Non-labor Discrimination

Reference

Daniel L. Chen, and Arianna Ornaghi, Gender Attitudes in the Judiciary: Evidence from U.S. Circuit Courts, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2023, forthcoming.

See also

Published in

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2023, forthcoming