Gender and public perceptions of judges who refuse to recuse

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent high-profile investigations into the U.S. judiciary have demonstrated that judges often refuse to recuse themselves from cases where they hold a conflict of interest. Given women’s presence in various political institutions has been shown to decrease perceptions of corruption and increase trust and legitimacy, I use a survey experiment to assess whether the public is more trusting of the decision-making of women judges who refuse to recuse themselves in cases where they hold a financial or interpersonal conflict of interest. I find women judges who refuse to recuse are trusted more to be unbiased in their decision-making, relative to male judges. Importantly, I find that men and women respondents are not equally trusting of women judges in this context. Specifically, men are more trusting of women judges than women.