John Szmer

Examining the Effects of Information, Attorney Capability, and Amicus Participation on U.S. Supreme Court Decision Making

Focusing on litigators or amicus curiae, a significant amount of scholarship has examined the impact of information on Supreme Court decision making. Taking into account that justices have varying degrees of substantive expertise across issues, we model the interaction of justice expertise with these external sources of information. Specifically, we test whether justices are more likely to be influenced by attorney capability in cases where they have less substantive legal expertise. We also explore whether justices’ reliance on amici is conditional on their own expertise, as well as the overall quality of the litigants’ attorneys. As anticipated, this research finds that as the justice’s legal expertise increases, the influence of attorney capability tends to decrease. Moreover, as the expertise of the judge and/or the quality of the attorneys increase, the impact of amici tends to decrease.

The Impact of Attorney Gender on Decision Making in the United States Courts of Appeals

Despite a growing recognition of the influence of gender in the policymaking arena, few scholars have studied the relationship between lawyer gender and decision making on appellate courts. This article examines this relationship in the context of the United States Courts of Appeals, where there have been a greater number of female judges for a longer period of time. The results of the analysis suggest that, in the average Courts of Appeals case, judges are generally more likely to side with female attorneys, even in the absence of a “womens issue.” In addition, both male and female judges are equally supportive of female lawyers even when the circuit is not particularly gender diverse. However, circuit judges are less likely to support female attorneys in cases in which the circuit reverses the lower court, indicating a notable disadvantage for female advocates in the very cases in which advocacy might be most crucial at the circuit court level.

High Court Recruitment of Female Clerks: A Comparative Analysis of the U.S. Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Canada

In this article, we systematically analyze the available data on SCOTUS clerk appointments to more thoroughly investigate the gender disparity in the hiring practices of its justices across the time period, 1941 to 2011, and compare this data, whenever possible, to that collected for the SCC from 1967 to 2007. In doing so, we are especially interested in exploring the impact of justice ideology and justice gender on individual decisions to hire female clerks. We maintain that the gender imbalance that has characterized the U.S. Supreme Courts composition might, at least partially, account for the discrepancy between the number of male and female clerks that have worked for this Court. It may also explain the notable relationship between a justices ideology and his or her decision to hire female clerks.