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Full-Text Articles in Law
Judging Women, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi, Mirya Holman, Eric A. Posner
Judging Women, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi, Mirya Holman, Eric A. Posner
Faculty Scholarship
Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s assertion that female judges might be “better” than male judges has generated accusations of sexism and potential bias. An equally controversial claim is that male judges are better than female judges because the latter have benefited from affirmative action. These claims are susceptible to empirical analysis. Primarily using a dataset of all the state high court judges in 1998-2000, we estimate three measures of judicial output: opinion production, outside state citations, and co-partisan disagreements. We find that the male and female judges perform at about the same level. Roughly similar findings show up in data from the …
What Do Federal District Judges Want?: An Analysis Of Publications, Citations, And Reversals, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi, Eric A. Posner
What Do Federal District Judges Want?: An Analysis Of Publications, Citations, And Reversals, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi, Eric A. Posner
Faculty Scholarship
We report evidence from a dataset of federal district judges from 2001 to 2002 that district judges adjust their opinion-writing practices to minimize their workload while maximizing their reputation and chance for elevation to a higher court. District judges in circuits with politically uniform circuit judges are better able to predict what opinions will get affirmed by the circuit court, leading to higher publication rates and a higher affirmance rate. In contrast, district judges in circuits with politically diverse circuit judges are less able to predict the preferences of the reviewing circuit court panel, leading district judges to publish fewer …