New Study Finds that Judges with Daughters Vote Pro-Women

A new study Harvard study—Identifying Judicial Empathy: Does Having Daughters Cause Judges to Rule for Women's Issues?—has discovered our justice system (surprise surprise!) isn't as unbiased as we'd like to believe. But happily in this case, the "prejudices" at play are completely in our favor.

Using new data on the family lives of U.S. Courts of Appeals judges, we find that, conditional on the number of children a judge has, judges with daughters consistently vote in a more feminist fashion on gender issues than judges who have only sons. This result survives a number of robustness tests and appears to be driven primarily by Republican judges. More broadly, this result demonstrates that personal experiences influence how judges make decisions, and it is the first paper to show that empathy may indeed be a component in how judges decide cases. — Adam N. Glynn of Harvard University and Maya Sen, University of Rochester

It almost makes us want to lobby for a neo-feminist eugenics law that would require all judges—both male and female—to have a daughter, though just how we'd go about that is another story (this is just a fantasy OK? A girl can dream).

Interestingly enough, the voting trends appeared only in regards to civil cases, typically dealing with claims of employment discrimination, as opposed to criminal cases like sexual assault or rape. We're wondering if perhaps violent sex crimes are so heinous that most judges can't help but side in a bi-partisan, pro-women manner, while the slippery stuff—like pay equity or childcare—are less black and white. Those judges with daughters, however, have likely experienced any discrimination against their daughters firsthand, and seek to protect others in the same position.

The Female Judges Bind

These findings raise questions about another judicial reality tied up in women's rights progress: the dearth of female judges on the bench. According to the National Women's Law Center, women in the federal judiciary still have "a long way to go." 

...the increased presence of women on the bench improves the quality of justice: women judges can bring an understanding of the impact of the law on the lives of women and girls to the bench, and enrich courts’ understanding of how best to realize the intended purpose and effect of the law that the courts are charged with applying. 

The sad facts:

-Only 4 of the 112 Supreme Court Justices ever to serve have been women.

-Only 32% of active United States district (or trial) court judges are women. 

-There are still nine district courts around the country where there has never been a female judge. 

-There are only 11 women of color on the U.S. courts of appeals. 

Wait! Here's The Good News

-Of President Obama’s 305 judicial nominees to date (including his nominees to the Supreme Court), 130 are women.

-Forty-seven of these nominees have been women of color (25 African-American women, 10 Hispanic women, eight Asian-American women, one Native American woman, one woman of Hispanic and Asian descent, and one woman of African-American and Hispanic descent).

-The number of Asian-American women judges has tripled, and includes the first Asian-American circuit court judge.

-Eight states have their first African-American female judge, and three states have their first Hispanic female judge.

If we just had more female judges, perhaps we wouldn't have to rely on our eugenics fantasy of daughters-for-all; instead we could rely on women to take care of women. Cross your fingers and toes that Obama's 17 pending female nominees get confirmed.

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