Different voices : measuring female judges\u27 influence on women\u27s rights issues in the U.S. Courts of Appeal.

Beginning with President Carter and continuing with each successive president, the federal bench has become more diverse. This has caused scholars to turn their attention to how personal characteristics such as race and sex affect judging. Understanding the effects of gender and race on judging is crucial because white female and minority female judges may bring a different perspective to the bench than their male counterparts due to their shared experiences with discrimination. To fill a gap in the literature, this study examines the impact of women in terms of legal influence and voting behavior. The results demonstrate that women are cited more often than their male counterparts when they author sex discrimination cases but not abortion or cases concerning the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA cases). However, I do not find significant differences in legal influence or voting behavior in any area when white women and minority women are compared. In sex discrimination and abortion cases, female judges’ voting behavior was similar to their same-party male colleagues. Only in ADA cases did I find Republican women were more liberal than their male counterparts