In the APSA Public Scholarship Program, graduate students in political science produce summaries of new research in the American Political Science Review. This piece, written by Irem B. A. Örsel, covers the new article by Ryan Copus, Ryan Hübert, and Paige Pellaton, “Trading Diversity? Judicial Diversity and Case Outcomes in Federal Courts”.
In recent years, for many political leaders, particularly Democrats, diversifying the judiciary has become a priority. The Biden administration is indisputably the best example, appointing more women and people of color judges than ever. But what is the logic behind it? Historically, most judges have been white men, resulting in court decisions that usually lack diversity and show similar patterns. Thus, people have been supporting the idea of diversifying judges on the bench, especially including more women and people of color. They have been thinking that this diversification may affect court rulings. So far, there has been extensive research on this issue, supporting the conclusion that the diverse set of judges makes this intended impact. For instance, some scholars highlight their findings that women and people of color judges decide more liberally than their white counterparts, especially on identity-related cases. But does having judges from more diverse backgrounds make a difference in the decision-making processes of cases? In a recent APSR research, Ryan Copus, Ryan Hübert, and Paige Pellaton challenge this common assumption.
In their thoughtful article, the authors find that diversity on the bench has little to no significant impact on case outcomes, challenging the common expectation that women judges and judges of color decide more liberally than white men. The authors also explore whether the political party of the appointing president impacts the decisions of the judges. They test these assumptions collecting and examining an original dataset of civil rights cases in 20 US federal district courts from 1995 to 2020. The dataset includes around 260,000 cases decided by 545 federal judges from important cities, such as New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago, which makes this dataset the largest and most comprehensive one for judicial diversity studies on federal courts. The authors also used a second dataset, including all civil rights cases in every federal district court in 2016 and 2017.
“Their findings may suggest that historically, Republican-appointed women judges and judges of color decided more conservatively, while Democratic-appointed judges decided the same way despite race or gender.“The authors’ findings challenge many common information on judicial diversity research. They show that there is no evidence that women judges from either Democrat or Republican parties generate more beneficial outcomes for women. The same finding holds in the authors’ research on judges of color from either party. However, Copus, Hübert, and Pellaton present one surprising finding: Republican-appointed women judges and judges of color produced more conservative decisions than Republican-appointed judges that are white men. The authors suggest that this may be related to the fact that Republican politicians care about diversity much less than Democratic politicians. This is why two parties may permit Republican presidents to use Democratic inclinations for diversity to deal with possible dissent to Republican presidents naming conservative judges. The authors define this situation as trading diversity, which is one of the significant contributions of this research.
It is important to note that the authors are not examining the historical impacts of judicial diversity. But their findings may suggest that historically, Republican-appointed women judges and judges of color decided more conservatively, while Democratic-appointed judges decided the same way despite race or gender. This study is significant for its findings, methods, and its ability to enlighten the political process for judicial nominations. All in all, it is important not only to follow diverse appointments on the bench but also to understand how politicians shaped these appointments.
- Irem B. A. Örsel is a Ph.D. student in Political Science at Tulane University. She holds a Bachelor’s in Philosophy from Middle East Technical University (Turkey) and a Master’s in Political Science from Eastern Illinois University. Her primary research interests are comparative political behavior, populism, judicial behavior, and computational social science methods. She focuses comparatively on Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and the United States of America. Irem is a first-generation student and an advocate of public service and public scholarship.
- COPUS, RYAN, RYAN HÜBERT, and PAIGE PELLATON. 2024. “Trading Diversity? Judicial Diversity and Case Outcomes in Federal Courts”, American Political Science Review, 1–15.
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