The Influence of Women and Racial Minorities Under Panel Decision Making on the U.S. Court of Appeals

This paper assesses the impact of gender and race on judicial decisions on the federal Court of Appeals, paying particular attention to the institutional nuances of decision-making on three-judge appellate panels within circuits. Its central question is whether and how racial minority and women judges influence legal policy on issues thought to be of particular concern to women and minorities. Proper analysis of this question requires investigating whether women and minority judges influence the decisions of other panel members. The authors find that the norm of unanimity on panels grants women influence over outcomes even when they are outnumbered on a panel

Storable Votes and Judicial Nominations in the U.S. Senate

We model a procedural reform aimed at restoring a proper role for the minority in the confirmation process of judicial nominations in the U.S. Senate. We propose that nominations to the same level court be collected in periodic lists and voted upon individually with Storable Votes, allowing each senator to allocate freely a fixed number of total votes. Although each nomination is decided by simple majority, storable votes make it possible for the minority to win occasionally, but only when the relative importance its members assign to a nomination is higher than the relative importance assigned by the majority. Numerical simulations, motivated by a game theoretic model, show that under plausible assumptions a minority of 45 senators would be able to block between 20 and 35 percent of nominees. For most parameter values, the possibility of minority victories increases aggregate welfare

Deliberation versus Bargaining on the U.S. Court of Appeal: Evidence from Sexual Harassment Law

This paper investigates indirect influences of gender diversification on the U.S. Court of Appeals, focusing upon whether and how women influence policy through pathways other than their individual votes. We analyze workplace sexual harassment cases spanning 1977 to 2006. Building upon recent work showing that women influence the votes of male colleagues when serving with them on three-judge panels, we probe the mechanism driving this pattern, and we find that deliberative processes rather than bargaining dynamics explain gender panel effects. We also find that the extent of doctrine which women have participated in crafting is positively associated with subsequent decisions for the plaintiff, and that the proportion of women on the full circuit, which exercises a monitoring role over individual panels, is associated with panel decisions for the plaintiff. We thus add to work showing that the influence of women on the U.S. Court of Appeals extends well beyond their individual votes

Deliberation versus Bargaining on the U.S. Court of Appeal: Evidence from Sexual Harassment Law

This paper investigates indirect influences of gender diversification on the U.S. Court of Appeals, focusing upon whether and how women influence policy through pathways other than their individual votes. We analyze workplace sexual harassment cases spanning 1977 to 2006. Building upon recent work showing that women influence the votes of male colleagues when serving with them on three-judge panels, we probe the mechanism driving this pattern, and we find that deliberative processes rather than bargaining dynamics explain gender panel effects. We also find that the extent of doctrine which women have participated in crafting is positively associated with subsequent decisions for the plaintiff, and that the proportion of women on the full circuit, which exercises a monitoring role over individual panels, is associated with panel decisions for the plaintiff. We thus add to work showing that the influence of women on the U.S. Court of Appeals extends well beyond their individual votes

The Politics of Opinion Assignment and Authorship on the US Court of Appeals: Evidence from Sexual Harassment Cases

We evaluate opinion assignment and authorship on the US courts of appeals. We derive theoretical explanations and predictions for opinion assignment that are motivated by the courts of appeals’ distinct institutional setting. Using an original data set of sexual harassment cases, we test our predictions and find that female and more liberal judges are substantially more likely to write opinions in sexual harassment cases. We further find that this pattern appears to result not from policy-driven behavior by female and liberal assigners but from an institutional environment in which judges seek out opinions they wish to write. Judicial opinions are the vehicles of judicial policy, and thus these results have important implications for the relationship between legal rules and opinion assignment and for the study of diversity and representation on multimember courts