Women on the bench

Rose Pulido

The Signal

For the first time in history, the U.S. Supreme Court began a new term with three female justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and newly elected Elena Kagan.

There have been four female justices to serve on the Supreme Court, but this is the first time three will be serving simultaneously.  Former President Ronald Reagan nominated the first female, former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.  The second female, Justice Ginsburg, was nominated by former President Bill Clinton, and both Justice Sotamayor and Justice Kagan were nominated by President Barack Obama.

Some women’s advocacy groups consider this to be a small stepping stone toward equal rights for women in politics.

“Our Supreme Court is 33 percent women, but you have to realize our government is only 17 percent women,” said Amy Siskind, president and co-founder of The New Agenda, a women’s advocacy group dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls.  “So, it’s hardly a breakthrough.  It’s good in that area, but it’s only one branch of our governing bodies, and we’re at 17 percent in the Senate and the House.”

Case rulings have always been analyzed and watched closely for bias judgments and judicial activism, which happens when judges base their decisions on personal beliefs and interests.  The question remains whether cases involving women’s issues and women’s rights will now benefit since more women are on the bench.

“My research indicates that female judges actually do provide some substantive representation to women more so than similar male judges,” said Christina Boyd, assistant professor in the department of political science at State University of New York at Buffalo, and co-author of the study, ‘Untangling the Casual Effects of Sex on Judging.’  “This is even the case for very conservative female judges when you compare them to very conservative male judges.”

Boyd’s study focused on judges from the U.S. Courts of Appeals, the federal courts directly below the Supreme Court, and on the differences between case decisions ruled by both sexes and whether female judges influence different behaviors from male judges.

“We find that after statistically accounting for judge characteristics like ideology, female judges vote more liberally than their male colleagues in sex discrimination cases (but not in other issue areas),” Boyd said.  “In addition, we also find that the presence of a female judge on an appellate panel causes her male colleagues to vote more liberally than they normally would in sex discrimination cases.”

Sex discrimination cases are one of the many issues women face.  Some other issues include constitution equality, violence against women and abortion rights.

Wellesley Center for Women conducted a study on the ‘Critical Mass on Corporate Boards: Why Three or More Women Enhance Governance,’ and found three or more women to be the influential number in creating a more open and cooperative atmosphere.

“The point of being a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court is not to work collaboratively or to be open to different perspectives,” said Dula Espinosa, associate professor of sociology at UHCL. “The main job is to interpret the U.S. Constitution, which they sometimes do unanimously (as in Brown v. Board of Ed) and sometimes with great disagreement (as in Bakke v. University of California Regents).”