Women in The United States Judiciary - Gender Bias and Barriers To Entry in The US Courts

Gender Bias and Barriers To Entry in The US Courts

In the 1980s and 1990s, women began to experience an increase in their access the courts, as employees, judges, and court-users. This increase in access, along with a renewed interest in uncovering underlying discrimination, led many courts to consider the experience that women were having in the traditionally male-dominated court system. In the early 1980s the National Organization for Women Legal Defense and Education Fund and the National Association of Women Judges banded together to push the state and federal courts to review a perceived bias against women that they believed existed in the courts. From 1982 to 1984, the New Jersey Supreme Court created and ran the nation's first official Task Force on Women in the Courts to "investigate the extent to which gender bias exists in the New Jersey judicial branch, and to develop an education program to eliminate any such bias." The task force found "significant gender bias," prompting the New Jersey Chief Justice to order the task force to continue its work indefinitely. The New Jersey report garnered significant public attention and prompted other states to consider similar studies in their own judicial branches.

At a 1988 joint meeting of the Conference of Chief Justices and the Conference of State Court Administrators the participants formulated resolutions directing each chief justice to create a task force in his or her jurisdiction to study "gender bias and minority concerns." This effort resulted in a comprehensive overview of issues impacting women in the various state judiciaries. Starting in 1992 with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the federal judiciary followed suit and sought to investigate any gender bias that might exist in the courts and seek ways to remedy the problems. The progress made by these courts was almost terminated in 1995, when the new Republican majority that swept into Congress under the Contract with America sought to cut off funding that had been provided to run these task forces on the federal level. The new majority "believed that bias task forces by the federal judiciary were both unnecessary and undesirable." However, the appropriation remained intact and tasks forces, such as Chief Judge Sloviter's Third Circuit Task Force, could continue to pursue their charters.

Each state and federal circuit task force learned from the successes and mistakes of its peers; some focused more on finding a systemic bias within the system, while others focused on possible solutions. Overall, there were several general critiques of the existing court setting, both in the perspective of women judges as well as women lawyers and court-users. Though there are several interesting findings made by the task forces, this article focuses on three particular: (1) the lack of politicking and networking available to women judges and women seeking to become judges; (2) inappropriate interactions that take place in courtrooms; and (3) the difficult act of balancing family life with the demands of a legal career.