Gender Attitudes in the Judiciary: Evidence from US Circuit Courts

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 D91, J16, K41)