Well said!: Professional norms and female justices' evaluation of lower court opinion text

Abstract

Supreme Court justices' opinions shape the contours of case law binding throughout the United States. Importantly though, justices do not write their opinions de novo. Rather, they routinely draw on lower court judges' opinion language when crafting opinions. In doing so, justices stretch the substantive impact of lower court judges' reasoning beyond the boundaries of their circuits. However, justices do not draw equally on lower court opinions; while previous work often ties this to judges' professional qualifications, we draw on work stressing female supervisors are more likely to enforce professional norms on subordinates. We argue female justices are more likely to draw upon lower court opinions complying with professional norms because of greater implicit norm internalization over the course of their careers. We test this proposition with a quantitative textual analysis of the justices' opinions and lower court opinions. We find support for our argument. This raises normative concerns about the overall impact of greater judicial diversity.