6 min read

Women Justices - An International Comparison

Rob Wiederstein | 2021-06-22
Categories: R
Tags: ggplot2

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor Being Sworn in by Chief Justice Warren Burger on September 25, 1981. Photo courtesy of the National Archives.
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Summary

Women serving on their country’s highest courts are a relatively new phenomena. The trend accelerated beginning in the 1990s and now includes countries all over the world of differing economic levels. Women impact both the process and outcome of court decisions when appointed. Additionally, women bolster court legitmacy among marginalized and unrepresented constituencies.

Table of Contents

Overview

A dataset was released on the number of women by country serving on the highest courts.[1] Two kinds of court structures exist. Some countries’ highest court is comprised of one court and it is often referred to as a “Supreme” court. Examples of this court structure would include the United States. Other countries have two high courts, comprised of a “Constitutional” court and an “Appellate” court. This structure is prevalent in civil law countries. In the dataset, the variable courttype is coded as SUP, APP, CON.

The dataset contains two date variables. year includes the years 1970 through 2013. The second variable yearfirstwoman is more current and includes any woman appointed to a high court as of December 31, 2020. The co-principal investigators profiles are available here and the book “Reimagining the Judiciary: Women’s Representation on High Courts Worldwide” is to be released in October 2021. More information is available, including visualizations, at Women on high courts.

Conclusion

As of 2013, there were more women justices in the West, in non-OECD countries and on courts designated as “APP.” The percentage of women serving was highest in countries in the top quintile of the human development index. More economically advanced countries were the first to begin appointing women, but over time, women in less prosperous countries have made significant advances as well. I’m really looking forward to the release of the researchers new book and hope you’ll read it too.

Acknowledgements

This blog post was made possible thanks to:

Women on High Courts

References

[1]
M. C. Escobar-Lemmon, V. J. Hoekstra, A. J. Kang, and M. C. Kittilson, “Breaking the Judicial Glass Ceiling: The Appointment of Women to High Courts Worldwide,” The Journal of Politics, vol. 83, no. 2, pp. 662–674, Apr. 2021, doi: 10.1086/710017. [Online]. Available: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/710017. [Accessed: 16-Jun-2021]
[2]
R Core Team, R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing, 2021 [Online]. Available: https://www.R-project.org/
[3]
Y. Xie, C. Dervieux, and A. Presmanes Hill, Blogdown: Create blogs and websites with r markdown. 2021 [Online]. Available: https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=blogdown
[4]
H. Wickham, Tidyverse: Easily install and load the tidyverse. 2021 [Online]. Available: https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=tidyverse

Disclaimer

The views, analysis and conclusions presented within this paper represent the author’s alone and not of any other person, organization or government entity. While I have made every reasonable effort to ensure that the information in this article was correct, it will nonetheless contain errors, inaccuracies and inconsistencies. It is a working paper subject to revision without notice as additional information becomes available. Any liability is disclaimed as to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause. The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Reproducibility

─ Session info ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
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 version  R version 4.1.0 (2021-05-18)
 os       macOS Catalina 10.15.7      
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 ui       X11                         
 language (EN)                        
 collate  en_US.UTF-8                 
 ctype    en_US.UTF-8                 
 tz       America/Chicago             
 date     2021-06-23                  

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[1] /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.1/Resources/library