Gender, Race, and Intersectionality on the Federal Appellate Bench

• Author: Todd Collins,Laura Moyer
• Published date: 01 June 2008
• Date: 01 June 2008
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1065912907306467
• Subject Matter: Articles

Political Research Quarterly

Volume 61 Number 2

June 2008 219-227

© 2008 University of Utah

10.1177/1065912907306467

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219

Gender, Race, and Intersectionality

on the Federal Appellate Bench

Todd Collins

Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, North Carolina

Laura Moyer

University of Georgia, Athens

While theoretical justifications predict that a judge’s gender and race may influence judicial decisions, empirical sup-

port for these arguments has been mixed. However, recent increases in judicial diversity necessitate a reexamination

of these earlier studies. Rather than examining individual judges on a single characteristic, such as gender or race

alone, this research note argues that the intersection of individual characteristics may provide an alternative approach

for evaluating the effects of diversity on the federal appellate bench. The results of cohort models examining the joint

effects of race and gender suggest that minority female judges are more likely to support criminal defendants’ claims

when compared to their colleagues on the bench, even after controlling for other important factors. This suggests that

our understanding of judicial behaviors may be assisted by the inclusion of how individual characteristics overlap

rather than examining those characteristics alone.

Keywords: judges; gender; race; intersectionality; U.S. courts of appeals; judicial behavior; criminal law

Black women are silenced between the rocks and

the hard places of racism and sexism. One way of

beginning to think about this space is suggested

by the concept of intersectionality. . . . This dual

vulnerability [of African-American women] does

not simply mean that our burdens are doubled, but

instead, that the dynamics of racism and sexism

intersect in our lives to create experiences that are

sometimes unique to us.

—Crenshaw (1992, 1467-68)

Female members of a racial minority occupy a

unique place within society. As this quote from

Kimberle Crenshaw (1992) suggests, female minorities

endure experiences and face challenges distinctive

from Caucasian females or minority males.1Since the

1970s, the number of female and minority judges has

continued to increase in the federal judiciary. However,

though a great deal of work has explored the nature of

judicial decision making in the federal courts, there is

little evidence to suggest that the recent diversification

of the federal bench has yielded any substantive impact

in the kinds of decisions rendered. The reason for these

“mixed” findings concerning race and gender is that

judges, as with other political elites, are not simply influ-

enced by one individual characteristic but by a host of

personal traits that collectively impact their behaviors.

As Crenshaw suggested, being a member of a minority

group and being a female, or the intersectionality of

gender and race, will create unique experiences for

female minority judges and may lead to unique behav-

iors in judicial decision making. Using an integrated

model, this research note examines the question of

whether this intersectionality influences judicial deci-

sions, as opposed to racial or gender status alone.

Assessing Behavioral Differences

Based on Group Membership

There are two general theoretical perspectives that

seek to explain how social attributes might work to

influence individuals’ behavior. The socialization

model emphasizes the way in which judges, like

other individuals, acquire their political orientations

through a developmental process of socialization

(Easton and Dennis 1969). Similar to the theoretical

underpinnings of symbolic politics research, the

model assumes that cases (as “symbols”) trigger pre-

dispositions that lead to political behavior (Schubert

1965). A second theoretical linkage suggests attrib-

utes are indicators of influences on behavior that are

Authors’Note: The authors would like to thank Dr. Susan Haire,

University of Georgia, for her assistance in this manuscript.