Fairness has a face: neutrality and descriptive representation on courts

Kirkpatrick, Jennet

doi:10.1080/21565503.2020.1782951

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Because white men have authored the vast majority of court opinions in the American legal system, we argue that this identity is implicitly linked with judicial opinion writing (see also Kirkpatrick, 2020). Ifill (2011, p. 441) similarly argues that "society builds the values embodied in our laws, for example, upon a set of accepted and legitimized narratives … In general, the dominant community's narratives form the basis of our approach to legal doctrine, theory, and practice.…”

Section: Experiences In Legal Education and The Path To The Benchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Related research on the impostor phenomenon finds that, in fields dominated by a particular group, individuals who do not fit into the profession's stereotype may adopt perfectionistic tendencies and set exceptionally high standards for their work, in order to demonstrate they have legitimately earned their position (Clance & Imes, 1978; Cokley et al, 2013; Sakulku & Alexander, 2011). As Nelson et al (2019, p. 1052) argue, “[g]ender and racial stereotypes afford individual members of privileged gender or ethno‐racial groups the presumption of competence while women and racial minorities are held to a higher standard than their white male counterparts.” In the law, a profession that has historically been dominated by white men, Kirkpatrick (2020) argues that white maleness is conflated with the neutral ideal of “judge as umpire,” leaving judges who are women and people of color open to charges of bias or incompatibility with the judicial role (see also Means & Unah, 2020).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…As Nelson et al (2019Nelson et al ( , p. 1052) argue, "[g]ender and racial stereotypes afford individual members of privileged gender or ethno-racial groups the presumption of competence while women and racial minorities are held to a higher standard than their white male counterparts." In the law, a profession that has historically been dominated by white men, Kirkpatrick (2020) argues that white maleness is conflated with the neutral ideal of "judge as umpire," leaving judges who are women and people of color open to charges of bias or incompatibility with the judicial role (see also Means & Unah, 2020).…”

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‘All eyes are on you’: Gender, race, and opinion writing on the US Courts of Appeals

et al. 2021

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Because stereotyping affects individual assessments of ability and because of socializing experiences in the law, we argue that women and judges of color, while well-credentialed, feel pressure to work harder than their white male peers to demonstrate their competence. Using an original dataset of published appellate court opinions from 2008-2016, we find that majority opinions authored by female and non-white judges go farther to explain and justify their rulings, when compared to opinions written by white male peers. In comparison to other judges, opinions by white men are about 6% shorter, with 11% fewer citations, and 17% fewer extensively discussed citations. Our findings suggest that norms about crafting judicial opinions are gendered and racialized in ways that create higher workloads for women and judges of color.Prestigious legal positions in the United States are filled, overwhelmingly, by white men. Women and people of color are underrepresented as tenured law school faculty and deans, as general counsel of Fortune 500 companies, and as partners in law firms (Kellerman & Rhode, 2017;Nelson et al., 2019). In state judiciaries, a 2019 report noted that white men constituted 56% of state supreme court seats, in spite of making up less than one third of the US population (Robbins & Bannon, 2019). The same report analyzed states with judicial elections and found that white male incumbents were more likely to run unopposed than white women, minority women, or minority men. As of January 2021, five of the nine sitting US Supreme Court justices were white men. Although Presidents Carter, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama all significantly increased the presence of women and individuals of color in the lower federal judiciary (Haire & Moyer, 2015), 1 one observer recently noted, "If you are ever unfortunate enough to wind up in federal court, chances are that your fate will be decided by a white man" (Millhiser, 2019).The experience of being one of a few "outsiders" in a high-profile, prestigious institution can be isolating and pressure-inducing for women and judges of color . As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg observed about her experiences as a woman in the legal profession, "when you are the only woman, all eyes are on you" (Associated Press, 1993). Biographers and historians have 1 Under President Trump, this trend has reversed, with the appointment of fewer non-white judges to the federal bench (FJC 2020). Trump did appoint slightly more women than George W. Bush but far fewer than recent Democratic presidents (Gramlich, 2021).

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Section: Experiences In Legal Education and The Path To The Benchmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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