Date of Award
Spring 4-24-2024
Document Type
Honors Project
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Political Science and International Affairs
Department Chair or Program Director
Cooperman, Rosalyn
First Advisor
McDonald, Jared
Second Advisor
Cooperman, Rosalyn
Major or Concentration
Political Science
Abstract
I explore the presence of gender bias in the judicial confirmation process by turning to the number of judicial philosophy questions asked of lower federal court nominees. Prior research on the subject has found that the Senate uses judicial philosophy, an ideologically-based idea of justices’ interpretations of the law and Constitution, as a measure of competence for appointees to the courts and has been found to ask disproportionate percentages of judicial philosophy questions of female candidates to the Supreme Court, especially if nominated by a President dissimilar in ideology to the majority of the Senate. My goal in exploring this subject is to highlight gender-based discrimination in the federal judiciary. I categorized questions from federal district and circuit court confirmation hearings based on whether or not they were related to the nominee’s judicial philosophy and analyzed them based on nominee gender . These variables were not found to be significant in analyzing the number of judicial philosophy questions asked of appointees, but there are explanatory factors to mitigate these data inconsistencies, such as the tendency of gender bias to be more apparent in more public settings and the overarching importance of partisan affiliation.
Recommended Citation
Walker, Hannah, "The Effect of Gender Bias on the Confirmation Hearings of Federal District and Circuit Court Appointees" (2024). Student Research Submissions. 583.
https://scholar.umw.edu/student_research/583