Better Too Much Than Not Enough : Women of Color on the Federal Bench

It is well established that the federal judiciary has been an overwhelmingly White and male institution since its creation and continues to be so today. Even as presidents of both parties have looked to diversify their judicial nominees, this has tended to result in the appointment of White women and men of color rather than women of color. Using data on the confirmed federal district and circuit court judges from presidents Clinton through Trump, we assess how the backgrounds of women of color nominated to the federal judiciary compare with those of other appointees. The results indicate that, compared to White male judges, women of color judges accrue more types of professional experience before their appointments, are more likely to have had prior experience as a judge, and are generally nominated earlier in their careers

Naming Names: The Impact of Supreme Court Opinion Attribution on Citizen Assessment of Policy Outcomes

The manner in which political institutions convey their policy outcomes can have important implications for how the public views institutions\u27 policy decisions. This paper explores whether the way in which the U.S. Supreme Court communicates its policy decrees affects how favorably members of the public assess its decisions. Specifically, we investigate whether attributing a decision to the nation\u27s High Court or to an individual justice influences the public\u27s agreement with the Court\u27s rulings. Using an experimental design, we find that when a Supreme Court outcome is ascribed to the institution as a whole, rather than to a particular justice, people are more apt to agree with the policy decision. We also find that identifying the gender of the opinion author affects public agreement under certain conditions. Our findings have important implications for how public support for institutional policymaking operates, as well as the dynamics of how the Supreme Court manages to accumulate and maintain public goodwill

Why Do Interest Groups Engage the Judiciary? Policy Wishes and Structural Needs

We test two competing explanations in order to answer the question: Why do organized interests choose to engage in advocacy behavior? The first turns on the notion that concerns with policy success are the principal forces affecting a group's choice. To a lesser degree, issues of group maintenance have also been identified as entering into organized interests' decisional calculus. Copyright (c) 2006 Southwestern Social Science Association.