Female Judges Research Articles

Starting Out on a Judicial Career: Gender Diversity and the Appointment of Recorders, Circuit Judges, and Deputy High Court Judges, 1996–2016

This article is a quantitative study of those who are appointed Recorders and Circuit Judges, and who are authorized or appointed as Deputy High Court Judges. It considers the period 1996–2016, being the twenty years that straddle either side of the creation of the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC). A key focus is the gender diversity of these appointments and how this has changed over time, including whether the transfer of appointments to the JAC has made a difference to gender diversity or whether increases in the proportions of female judges are attributable solely to a changing demographic among the pool of lawyers from which such judges tend to be appointed. Who are appointed to these positions is significant both because of the importance of the positions themselves, but also because they comprise the pool from which, as a practical reality, the Senior Judiciary is appointed.

The impact of maleness on judicial decision making: masculinity, chivalry, and immigration appeals

ABSTRACTEvidence of gendered decision making by judges has been mixed at best. We argue that this is a result of a narrow focus on how female judges differ from male judges. This treats women as the “other,” and the primary object of study is often to determine why female judicial behavior differs from the “norm” of male behavior. We depart from this tradition by using male-centered theories to derive and test hypotheses about maleness and the interactive effect of judge gender and litigant gender in appellate decision making. Drawing on findings from an original dataset of immigration appeals, we find evidence that gender biases manifest themselves in patterns of appellate decision making among all-male panels. Despite our predictions, female judges may also demonstrate evidence of these biases.

Avoiding Adversariness? The Effects of Gender on Litigant Decision-Making

How does gender influence the American judicial system? Scholars interested in this question have focused on several areas, including the substance of the law (Bender 1993; Olsen 1995; Rifkin 1981), the presence of women on a jury (Fowler 2005; Marder 1987; Taylor-Thompson 2000), and the sex of criminal defendants (Sarnikar, Sorenson, and Oaxaca 2007; Starr 2012). Among political scientists in particular, most work has examined judicial decision-making and whether the rulings of female judges differ from those of their male counterparts. Results of these studies have been mixed: some indicate that female judges vote differently, at least in certain types of cases (Boyd, Epstein, and Martin 2010; Peresie 2005; Songer and Crews-Meyer 2000), but others have found no, or only a minimal, gender effect (Segal 2002; Songer, Davis, and Haire 1994; Walker and Barrow 1985).

Hakim Perempuan Dalam Perspektif Hukum Islam Dan Hukum Positif Indonesia

The judicial institution in a country is very strategic and decisive one for being used to resolve all public disputes and punish those who violate the law in accordance with the emering rules. This judicial institution is needed in an effort to answer and solve all social problems along with the development and the dynamics in the community. A judge is an authority aimed at resolving the various conflicts and creating justice for the community, and judges are leading actors in solving the problems. Therefore judges in acting and taking decisions must be based on so-called ijtihad. The phenomenon of women's involvement as judges in administering judicial power in the Religious Courts has undergone several phases of change. This condition is strongly influenced by the striking discrepancy of fiqh viewpoints about the religious (syar'i) legality in looking at women in the public sphere, especially in the judiciary. One of the reasons of Muslim scholars in questioning the female judges is due to their duties and responsibilities. On this stand, the Muslim scholars, thingkers and mujtahid have their own points of view that are different from one another. This refusal does not mean ignoring the judicial institution, but rather they consider it fardhu kifayah. Therefore, what is to be revealed in this study is the Islamic law and Indonesian positive law perspectives about female judges. This study concludes that the study of female judges in the perspectives of Islamic law is polarized on several permitting and prohibiting poles and the ones permitting women to serve as judges are only in their involvement in civil cases not in criminal ones. While based on the perspective of Indonesian positive law the female judges are a must in the legal treasures in Indonesia

An Empirical Assist To Determine Whether An Activity Is Engaged In For A Profit

Taxpayers engage in activities for both tax and nontax reasons. Some of these undertakings are geared to earn a profit. Other activities provide personal pleasure and recreation. Regardless of the activity type, expenses are incurred and can be substantial. Depending on the type of engagement, profit may or may not be achieved. Naturally, many of these pursuits are undertaken for a number of consecutive years. Because of the tax benefits these activities possess, this issue remains highly litigated and closely scrutinized by the Internal Revenue Service. This study investigates the guidance delineated by the Service and creates a model of the significant variables that affect the judiciary’s decision-making. Backwards stepwise logistic regression is used to create the model. Chi-square is also used to determine statistical significance between the decision rendered and judge’s gender. Also, political affiliation of the judge is examined. The one variable (manner in which the taxpayer carries on an activity) model created correctly classifies 96.3% of the decisions made in the U.S. Tax Court. Additionally, a statistically significant difference is found between male and female judges. However, no difference is found based on the political affiliation of the judge.

HAKIM PEREMPUAN DALAM PERSPEKTIF HUKUM ISLAM DAN HUKUM POSITIF INDONESIA

The judicial institution in a country is very strategic and decisive one for being used to resolve all public disputes and punish those who violate the law in accordance with the emering rules. This judicial institution is needed in an effort to answer and solve all social problems along with the development and the dynamics in the community. A judge is an authority aimed at resolving the various conflicts and creating justice for the community, and judges are leading actors in solving the problems. Therefore judges in acting and taking decisions must be based on so-called ijtihad. The phenomenon of women's involvement as judges in administering judicial power in the Religious Courts has undergone several phases of change. This condition is strongly influenced by the striking discrepancy of fiqh viewpoints about the religious (syar'i) legality in looking at women in the public sphere, especially in the judiciary. One of the reasons of Muslim scholars in questioning the female judges is due to their duties and responsibilities. On this stand, the Muslim scholars, thingkers and mujtahid have their own points of view that are different from one another. This refusal does not mean ignoring the judicial institution, but rather they consider it fardhu kifayah. Therefore, what is to be revealed in this study is the Islamic law and Indonesian positive law perspectives about female judges. This study concludes that the study of female judges in the perspectives of Islamic law is polarized on several permitting and prohibiting poles and the ones permitting women to serve as judges are only in their involvement in civil cases not in criminal ones. While based on the perspective of Indonesian positive law the female judges are a must in the legal treasures in Indonesia.

Wine, Women, Men, and Type II Error

AbstractMore than forty published works show that women and men differ in their taste preferences for sweet, salt, sour, bitter, fruit, and other flavors. Despite those differences, dozens of state fair and other wine competitions determine winners' ribbons, medals, scores, and ranks by pooling the opinions of female and male judges. This article examines twenty-three blind wine tastings during which female and male judges scored more than nine hundred wines. Two-sample t-test results show that the gender-specific distributions of scores do have similar means and standard deviations. Exact p-values for two-sample chi-square tests show that the distributions of men's and women's scores are not significantly different, and exact p-values for likelihood ratio tests of Plackett-Luce model results show that the genders' preference orders are not significantly different. The correlation coefficient between women's and men's scores is weakly positive in 90 percent of the tastings. On that evidence, indications that the genders prefer different wines are difficult to detect. If such differences do exist, as the nonwine literature implies, the results of this analysis show that those differences are small compared to non-gender-related idiosyncratic differences between individuals and random expressions of preference. The potential for accept-a-false-null-hypothesis Type II error when pooling female and male judges' wine-related opinions appears to be small. (JEL Classifications: A10, C10, C00, C12, D12)

Buccal Corridors: A Fact or a Myth in the Eyes of Laymen?

AIM:This study aimed to investigate laymen knowledge of the existence of the buccal corridor and whether it was an important factor for them in judging smile attractiveness and the effect of introducing the knowledge to them on their further judgment.MATERIALS AND METHODS:Nine subjects were randomly selected with variable buccal corridor percentages. They were coached to smile in a posed fashion and full face smile photographs were taken from a standardised distance. The photographs were randomly arranged in a power point presentation and displayed to a panel of thirty-nine randomly selected laymen judges. The judges made their beauty judgment on a visual analogue scale (VAS) and filled a questionnaire. After their education about the buccal corridor, they were asked to make a second judgment on a second sheet with VAS and with a different random sequence of the photographs.RESULTS:Intra-class correlation agreement for all the judges between the first and second scores was 0.713. The Spearman’s rho Correlation coefficient indicated a positive correlation for all the photos. For the male judges, the agreement between the ratings was 0.839, and the correlation was positive for all the photos. For the female judges, the agreement between the ratings was 0.510, and the correlation was positive for all the photographs. Hundred percent of the judges were not familiar with the buccal corridor. Eighty percent of the female judges and 44.4% of the male judges mentioned that it would affect their further judgment.CONCLUSION:Laymen build their esthetic judgments on what we teach them, and modifying treatment plans to include corrections of buccal corridors for esthetic reasons only is a myth.

To “Mother” or not to “Mother”: The Representative Roles of Women Judges in Ghana

AbstractFeminist scholars have debated questions of gender and judging by focusing on variables such as representation, difference, diversity and legitimacy. While illuminating, most of these studies are by scholars in the global north. More research is needed to understand issues of gender and judging in the global south. This article adds to existing literature by asking whether women judges promote women's rights. Through in-depth interviews with women judges in Ghana, the article demonstrates that women judges do promote women's rights. The article presents a new method of analysis: exploring the dichotomy betweendirect and indirectmodes of representing women's rights. Recognizing the importance of substantive representation and the contributions of female judges in promoting women's rights, it argues that female judges are not a sufficient condition for promoting women's rights. Necessary conditions include laws guaranteeing women's rights, working partnerships with women's civil society organizations and an enabling socio-cultural climate.

Adjudicating Adjudication and the Problem of Epistemic Caution

Does evidence of a biomechanical cause of psychopathy reduce sentencing to the same extent for male and female judges? A recent experiment found that when psychiatric evidence of criminal psychopathy was supplemented by evidence of an underlying biomechanism, judges assigned shorter average sentences and were more likely to cite at least one mitigating factor of psychopathy in accompanying written opinions. But it remains unclear whether the absence of neurobiological evidence justifies the retention of longer sentences, and unclear whether the opinions of this judicial sample are widely held, or reflect the unique demographics of the U.S. state trial judiciary. Specifically, previous research has found systematic differences in the credence that men and women give to different kinds of scientific explanations, and this research suggests that the discovered scientism among U.S. state trial judges may be moderated by the gender ratio of that population, which is skewed heavily toward men. Here, a reanalysis of the data in which this effect was first revealed found no effect of biomechanism on female judges' sentencing or opinions. These results suggest that it is worth further investigating whether the overrepresentation of men on the bench may lead to a hard-scientific bias in U.S. state courts. Additionally, the findings highlight the need to develop a scientific understanding of the social forces that give rise to these gender differences in the first place, and reveal problems with a concept that I develop and critique called the principle of epistemic caution.

The Rise and Fall of Bad Judge: Lady Justice is No Tramp

Much of the fabric of the modern world is woven on the loom of popular culture. While scholars have defined pop culture differently, there is a general consensus as to its strong influence on modern society. As television has become our society's principal means of storytelling, its offerings concerning the world of lawyers have become a staple of the popular culture consumed by Americans. There is a feedback loop between law and popular culture which is self-perpetuating: popular culture influences the viewing public's perception of the law, which in turn affects the public's expectations, which are reinforced by the misconduct of actual members of the legal profession, which affects what the networks will portray as popular legal culture. This cause and effect scenario is the result of what might be referred to in dance parlance as the Legal Culture Two-Step.In light of the self-perpetuating nature of the Popular Legal Culture Two-Step, the burning inquiry must be whether there is any way to interrupt or ameliorate the ramifications of the relationship between law and televised legal popular culture in instances where what is broadcast defaces the law as an honorable profession. The urgency of addressing this query was highlighted with the airing of a new series during the fall of 2014, Bad Judge. Bad Judge serves as a prototype for the type of legal shows which television should not be broadcasting and is a perfect platform on which to illustrate the harm which may result from the effect. To delve a bit deeper into the underpinnings of the Popular Legal Culture Two-Step put forth in this piece, Part II of the article discusses the cultivation theory, heuristic processing, and the process known as resonance, the lynchpins for the premise that television viewing does affect the viewer's perception of reality. It also examines the influence of resonance in the context of both syndi-court shows and actual incidents of judicial misconduct. Part III critiques a number of episodes of Bad Judge and evaluates the actions and conduct of Judge Rebecca Wright in light California's Canons of Judicial Ethics. It also focuses upon a written entreaty to NBC made by the Miami-Dade chapter of the Florida Association for Women Lawyers requesting cancellation of the show. Finally, the article explores possible responses to the demeaning portrayal of the judicial system and female judges and attorneys conveyed in Bad Judge in order to ameliorate the influence of television's of viewer perceptions of the legal world and to prevent such perceptions from becoming viewer reality.

The Ideal Judge: How Implicit Bias Shapes Assessment of State Judges

Judicial Performance Evaluation (JPE) is generally seen as an important part of the merit system, which often suffers from a lack of relevant voter information. Utah's JPE system has undergone significant change in recent years. Using data from the two most recent JPE surveys, we provide a preliminary look at the operation of this new system. Our results suggest that the survey component has difficulty distinguishing among the judges on the basis of relevant criteria. The question prompts intended to measure performance on different ABA Categories are also indistinguishable. We also find evidence that, on some measures, female judges do disproportionately worse than male judges. We suggest that the free response comments and the new Court Observation Program results may improve the ability of the commission to make meaningful distinctions among the judges on the basis of appropriate criteria.

ANALISIS LITERATUR ISU PELANTIKAN HAKIM SYARIE WANITA DI MALAYSIA

Qadi or judge is a significant post in a state. Islam has enumerated certain detailed and strict conditions for a person to be appointed as a judge. Among the conditions is appointing a male judge for the post. Discussion on this issue in Malaysia is still ongoing as there are states that have not giving opportunity for women to have the post. This article aims to analyze literature review on the issue in Malaysia. A comparative content analysis approach was applied in analyzing the data gathered. The analysis discovers that there are lot of writings in fiqh references that disagree with the appointment of female judges. However, contemporary writings show that a lot of writing that supported and agreed with the appointment of female judges in certain area of judgements.Keywords: Shariah Judges, Women, Justification, Appointment, Acceptance

Gendering Political Agency in the Maghreb

Gendering Political Agency in the Maghreb

Predicting Federal Judicial Decisionmaking in University Admissions Cases

This article considers the evolving federal jurisprudence on the use of race in university admissions through an empirical lens. We test the extent to which existing theoretical frameworks from the literature about judicial decisionmaking can be used to explain federal judicial decisions in cases involving the use of race in university admissions policies. Specifically, our test seeks to determine whether a judge’s decision to afford deference to a policy involving the use of race in university admissions can be predicted from background and socialized characteristics of the judge, idiosyncrasies of the court, or elements unique to the era in which the decision is made. Our results do not indicate support for the attitudinal or political cultures theoretical frameworks, which have drawn much attention in the judicial decisionmaking literature, to explain substantive or procedural decisions. Instead, we find mixed effects supporting the behavioral framework when examining substantive judicial decisions. The key element of this framework rests on the statistically significant effect found in a judge’s gender, suggesting a deference among female judges to university admission policies that permeates substantive judicial decisionmaking. We also find significant and large effects for the era in which a decision is made, particularly in substantive decisions, supporting evidence of a punctuated equilibrium theoretical framework in our sample of cases. Finally, we employ our model to predict how the Supreme Court justices would decide the Fisher v. University of Texas case and report our predictions. Our empirical inquiry provides insight into questions about judicial use of academic abstention and deference, as well as how race-conscious admissions policies will fare before judicial decisionmakers, given the temporal context of the cases and controversies involving race-conscious university admissions policies.

Women are not a Proxy: Why the Constitution Requires Feminist Judges

ABSTRACTThe South African Constitution entrenches the achievement of equality as a founding value and the full and equal enjoyment of all rights and freedoms as a right and prohibits discrimination based on both sex and gender. Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression and to end all forms of gender discrimination. The Constitution, at its core, therefore embodies a feminist ideology. This has implications for the interpretation and application of all law and policy, including s 174 of the Constitution which requires the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) to consider ‘the need for the judiciary to reflect broadly the racial and gender composition of South Africa when judicial officers are appointed’. Broadly, the JSC's conduct between 1994 and 2014 evidences a failure to understand both gender and its constitutional mandate in terms of s 174 to proactively pursue the appointment of both female and feminist judges. Attempts to appoint more women, absent an appropriate understanding of gender, have resulted in both subtle and overt discrimination against female candidates for judicial selection. In order to remedy its misguided approach and fulfil its mandate the JSC must produce detailed guidelines on its approach to gender transformation of the judiciary, grounded in a feminist understanding of the Constitution. A unified feminist movement which embraces South Africa's feminist Constitution, with the support of a broad coalition of human rights advocacy groups and activist organisations, is urgently needed to guide the JSC in its understanding of feminism and gender, but also to hold the JSC to account when it betrays this mandate. Women are not a proxy for feminism; the South African judiciary is in dire need of a more feminist face.

Field Notes Female Judges in Southern Punjab, Pakistan

No abstract

Do Female Judges Judge Better?

Do Female Judges Judge Better?

Gender Diversity in the Intermediate Appellate Courts of Canada

A large sample of cases from the courts of appeal in five large Canadian provinces are examined to assess the impact of gender diversification on appellate courts. The findings are that there are significant gender differences on the courts of appeal that parallel those on the Supreme Court of Canada. Women are significantly more likely than men are to support the government in criminal cases and to support the individual in civil liberties cases. Moreover, strong panel effects are discovered. As the number of female judges increases, the more male judges tend to adopt the typical female approach to judicial outcomes; no evidence is found that supports critical mass theory.

Trailblazers and Those That Followed: Personal Experiences, Gender, and Judicial Empathy

This article investigates one causal mechanism that may explain why female judges on the federal appellate courts are more likely than men to side with plaintiffs in sex discrimination cases. To test whether personal experiences with inequality are related to empathetic responses to the claims of female plaintiffs, we focus on the first wave of female judges, who attended law school during a time of severe gender inequality. We find that female judges are more likely than their male colleagues to support plaintiffs in sex discrimination cases, but that this difference is seen only in judges who graduated law school between 1954 and 1975 and disappears when more recent law school cohorts of men and women judges are compared. These results suggest that the effect of gender as a trait is tied to the role of formative experiences with discrimination.