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Trailblazers and Those That Followed: Personal Experiences, Gender, and Judicial Empathy
Author(s) -
Moyer Laura P.,
Haire Susan B.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
law and society review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.867
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1540-5893
pISSN - 0023-9216
DOI - 10.1111/lasr.12150
Subject(s) - plaintiff , empathy , psychology , inequality , employment discrimination , trait , test (biology) , gender discrimination , sex discrimination , law , social psychology , political science , demographic economics , economics , mathematical analysis , paleontology , mathematics , computer science , biology , programming language
This article investigates one causal mechanism that may explain why female judges on the federal appellate courts are more likely than men to side with plaintiffs in sex discrimination cases. To test whether personal experiences with inequality are related to empathetic responses to the claims of female plaintiffs, we focus on the first wave of female judges, who attended law school during a time of severe gender inequality. We find that female judges are more likely than their male colleagues to support plaintiffs in sex discrimination cases, but that this difference is seen only in judges who graduated law school between 1954 and 1975 and disappears when more recent law school cohorts of men and women judges are compared. These results suggest that the effect of gender as a trait is tied to the role of formative experiences with discrimination.