Does Gender Matter With Judges? (Yup)

I was on a panel in SW Oklahoma a couple weeks ago entitled "Lose the Battle, But Win the War: 35 Years Later, Did the E.R.A. Matter?"

On the panel with me were the masterful panel moderator Mike Turpen, the (she didn't just live it but led it) former State Senator Penny Williams, and two young women lawyers. To cut to the chase, the young ladies (one a judge) really didn't think gender made any difference. I vehemently disagreed but came away feeling I hadn't won the debate.

So, belatedly, I offer as evidence the following piece (below) shamelessly ripped from the US News & World Report website. It is a blog entry by Bonnie Erbe. The emphasis is added by me.

In Souter's Case, Sex and Pay Discrimination Stats Make Case for More Like Him
May 04, 2009, 10:20 AM ET | Bonnie Erbe | Permanent Link | Print

By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.

Last week in this space, I wrote that as President Obama ponders his choice to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter, few women could be more female-sensitive than Justice Souter himself when it comes to traditional women's rights issues such as abortion rights and pay discrimination.

New research released over the weekend by the Washington Post (<-- check this out too) on the voting differences between male and female judges confirms there are differences between how the two rule on cases, especially when it comes to pay discrimination:

In research that we conducted with our colleague Andrew D. Martin, we studied the votes of federal court of appeals judges in many areas of the law, from environmental cases to capital punishment and sex discrimination. For the most part, we found no difference in the voting patterns of male and female judges, except when it comes to sex discrimination cases. There, we found that female judges are approximately 10 percent more likely to rule in favor of the party bringing the discrimination claim. We also found that the presence of a female judge causes male judges to vote differently. When male and female judges serve together to decide a sex discrimination case, the male judges are nearly 15 percent more likely to rule in favor of the party alleging discrimination than when they sit with male judges only.

To "get it" means a judge or politician can empathize with the perspective of someone from a different background and discern how that person would reason in a case affecting his or her rights. Justice Souter clearly gets it when it comes to empathizing with persons of different backgrounds and so, presumably, does President Obama.

Bingo. Told you so.