INTERNATIONAL CONFLICTS AND DECISION MAKING ON THE FEDERAL DISTRICT COURTS*

The international environment influences domestic politics, particularly during times of war. The traditional governmental response to such crises is to curtail the civil rights and liberties of Americans in the name of national security. Often, challenges to these restrictive policies find their way into the federal court system. However, little is known about the systematic effects of these conflicts on the choices jurists make. To redress this deficiency, we investigate whether international conflicts influence the decision making of federal district-court judges by examining the choices those judges make during periods of both war and peace. In addi-tion, we consider whether male and female jurists react differently to periods of internation-al unrest. We find that female judges do respond to wars, deciding cases more liberally than in peacetime, but male judges exhibit no response. As such, our results suggest that gender is an important consideration in evaluating the judicial response to war. he current U.S. war on terror has had a dramatic influence on many aspects of domestic politics. None, however, have been as controversial as the debate regarding the potential erosion of individual rights and liberties. In light of the Patriot Act, and other governmental responses to the war on terror, many academics