Supreme Bias: Gender and Race in U.S. Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings (Stanford University Press)

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Description

In Supreme Bias: Gender and Race in U.S. Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings, three leading scholars of the Supreme Court confirmation process and diversity in the judiciary, Christina L. Boyd, Paul M. Collins, Jr., and Lori A. Ringhand, present for the first time a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics of race and gender at the Supreme Court confirmation hearings held before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Drawing on their deep knowledge of the confirmation hearings, as well as rich new qualitative and quantitative evidence, the authors highlight how the women and people of color who have sat before the Committee have faced a significantly different confirmation process than their white, male colleagues. Despite being among the most qualified and well-credentialed lawyers of their respective generations, female nominees and nominees of color face more skepticism of their professional competence, are subjected to stereotype-based questioning, are more frequently interrupted by questioning senators, and are described in less positive terms by senators. In addition to revealing the disturbing extent to which race and gender bias exists even at the highest echelon of U.S. legal power, this book also provides concrete suggestions for how that bias can be reduced in the future.

Features

  • Provides the most comprehensive examination ever undertaken of racial and gender bias at the hearings of Supreme Court nominees
  • Makes use of more than 80 years of stories culled from confirmation hearing transcripts to vividly illustrate how American history is reflected in and influences racial and gender bias at the hearings
  • Opens most chapters with a vignette demonstrating the ways race and gender bias influenced the hearings
  • Provides extensive coverage of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s 2022 confirmation hearing and reactions from politicians and commentators to her treatment during the hearing
  • Devotes special attention to the confirmation hearings featuring Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill, and Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, including a comparison of the two
  • Takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding race and gender bias, building on scholarship in gender studies, law, linguistics, management, psychology, political science, sociology, and other fields
  • Employs a vast dataset that contains information on every question asked and answer given at every open public hearing of a Supreme Court nominee from 1939-2022
  • Statistical information is relayed in accessible ways, including via easy-to-understand graphics and descriptive data
  • Appropriate for use in advanced undergraduate, graduate, and law school courses focusing on race and gender politics, judicial politics, law and society, legal history, congress, and the U.S. Supreme Court

C. Herman Pritchett Award Winner

Supreme Bias has received the 2024 C. Herman Pritchett Award from the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association. This award recognizes Supreme Bias as the best book on law and courts written by a political scientist.

Praise for Supreme Bias

“Supreme Bias is an important book. The research is vital, timely, and innovative as it is the first book to comprehensively focus on gender and racial biases during the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings. Collins, Ringhand, and Boyd present novel qualitative and quantitative data and find that female nominees and nominees of color face very different confirmation hearings than white male nominees. The work is theoretically rich, and the scope and depth of the book is remarkable. In short, Supreme Bias will transform how scholars study Supreme Court confirmation hearings.”

-Jennifer Bowie, University of Richmond

“Supreme Bias provides compelling evidence that confirmation hearings unfold based on a nominee’s race and gender. This thorough analysis provides an important contribution to our understanding of the collision between efforts to diversify the Supreme Court and how nominees are treated in the most public part of the appointment process.”

-Lisa M. Holmes, University of Vermont

“Supreme Bias deepens our understanding of the way the U.S. Senate exercises its advice and consent power. Boyd, Collins, and Ringhand leverage the most comprehensive and sophisticated dataset of U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings to systematically assess the dynamics of senator-nominee interactions, illuminating how senators’ treatment of nominees is shaped by gender, race, and partisanship. This groundbreaking book will be cited extensively for years to come.”

-Eve Ringsmuth, Oklahoma State University

Read an Excerpt

Click Here (Link to Google Books)

Replication Materials

This file contains the data and do files to replicate the empirical analyses in the book. The data are in Stata format, compressed in a ZIP file. The Stata code to replicate the models appears in the accompanying do files. To download the data and replication materials, click here: Download Data.