Keywords
judicial politics, political behavior, American institutions, administrative courts, gender, race and ethnicity
Book Project
(Under Contract with NYU Press)
How Women Rule: Judicial Empathy and Gender
This project examines the role of gender in judicial rulings. I ask why gender bias has only been found in certain types of cases and courts when identity-based theories would imply universal same-gender bias. I propose a theory which posits that gender differences may arise due to differences in empathy. I show that judicial empathy implies lenient rulings under certain conditions, such as when the effect of a ruling is difficult to quantify. In such cases, perceptions of the stakes to an adversely affected party may differ by gender even among people with similar training. I then test these implications using experiments, court data, and interviews. This work is the first to provide robust empirical support for judicial empathy across levels of training.
My work uses mixed methods to analyze gender differences and biases. I compare judges of similar expertise by web-scraping case data to test for gender bias in administrative courts such as Social Security courts and the Federal Trade Commission. I complement the analysis of observational data by running online experiments with law students and a nationally representative sample of the public. Additionally, I interview current and former judges to bear witness to some of the experiences of becoming and remaining a judge. The use of statistical, experimental, and qualitative methods strengthens the argument of the project by allowing for a rich combination of statistical tests of quantitative data, the strong internal validity for causal inference offered by experiments, and the nuance and perspectives raised by interviews. External validity is strengthened by examining the question at all stages of a judge’s career.
Working Papers
Wasting Away: Examining the Nomination Process in the Federal Judiciary develops a theory for the period between the creation of federal court vacancies and the announcement of presidential nominations. I argue that the reason for a vacancy is an important determinant of the duration of that vacancy and that the informational costs of compiling potential nominees leads presidents to prioritize filling particular vacancies over others. This study utilizes an original data set and Cox proportional-hazards models to consider the factors that affect the timing of the duration of a vacancy. The study confirms the theoretical findings. Presidents nominate more quickly for higher court levels and after having undergone the effort to nominate someone else (who was withdrawn or returned), providing evidence for a technological/ information cost of nominating. Vacancies on the bench are allowed to continue even during united government and with a high presidential approval rating, because the process of choosing nominees may be more costly than the process of having them confirmed by the Senate. A slower nomination is also more likely when there are more vacancies in the judiciary.
Unprimed and Unprompted Public Beliefs about Judge Bias (co-authored with Ben Marx, UIUC Economics) examines Americans' declining trust in institutions and concerns about biases in the justice system. I conduct a survey experiment to gauge public opinion about judge gender and bias using direct elicitation and conjoint analysis. Respondents tend to view judges as less biased than the average person but expect judges to be biased sometimes. Female judges are considered more lenient and male judges more biased. When facing pairs of hypothetical judges with randomized characteristics, subjects significantly preferred female judges in both relative and absolute terms. The preference for female judges is mediated by beliefs about judge bias, with no significant preference shown between two judges with known ruling histories but a strong female-subject preference for a female judge over a male judge with unknown ruling history.
“Under Pressure: Evidence from Immigration Courts” (co-authored with Ben Marx, UIUC Economics) studies the assignment of cases to immigration judges in the U.S. Over the last twenty years, immigration courts have faced rapid growth in the number of cases to be heard, creating time pressure that might affect the allocation of cases to judges and the decisions of judges on a given case. This draft takes a first step in examining these issues by testing the exogeneity of case assignment. We calculate the stringency of a judge in a given case using this judge’s decisions in other cases, and we find a highly statistically significant relationship between this measure and baseline characteristics such as the non-citizen’s language, raising questions about our ability to estimate the effect of judges on the decisions in their cases.
Work in Progress
Federal Workforce Perception of Diversity Management investigates employee perceptions of diversity policies in the federal workforce. I ask whether diversity policies and practices are perceived differently by minority employees and agency supervisors. I argue that challenges exist in the implementation of diversity policies that result in information asymmetry, not only between agencies, but also among supervisors and minority employees along two demographic traits- race/ethnicity and gender. I utilize a multilevel design and employ 2010-2018 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey data to test the expectation of information asymmetry concerning diversity management. This study provides key insights into the performance and challenges facing federal workforce management.
Hostile Immigration State Policies and their Effect on Migration examines the effects of policy and enforcement environments on the behavior of documented and undocumented immigrants. It is believed that the higher the personal costs to an immigrant, the longer the length of stay in the United States. Utilizing spatial analysis and spatial econometric techniques, this project exploits the spatially dependent nature of data to point out dynamics not addressed in previous literature (Rocha et al. 2014).
Roll over or Rollover? Elections and Federal Nominations (with Alicia Uribe-McGuire, UIUC Political Science) asks what can the timing of a nomination to federal courts tell us about presidential and Senate behavior. This project examines presidential appointments to federal vacancies before and after Senate elections, examining how timing matters for presidential behavior during the nomination stage.