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It’s Not What You Do, It’s the Way that You Do It: Increasing Women’s Presence at the Supreme Court
Lane, Elizabeth A. Schoenherr, Jessica A.
Lane, Elizabeth A.
Schoenherr, Jessica A.
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Abstract
Despite occasional arguments that women deserved judicial representation, no woman sat on the nation’s highest court until 1981, and they are only now nearing parity on the bench. While women’s presence on the Court is symbolically important and substantively meaningful in its own right, research also suggests it should create more opportunities for women to work within the broader Court system as clerks and advocates. We examine the composition of the clerk and advocacy corps between the 1984 and 2018 terms to see if that is true. Our results suggest it is. We find that more women get named to coveted clerkships as more women join the Court, and more women are leading briefs and appearing as oral advocates than they did as the past, especially in the Office of the Solicitor General. Our results suggest diversity at the top of the Court creates opportunities to work inside and appeal to it, which can have lasting consequences for the broader legal profession and, ultimately, the judiciary itself.