Susan W. Johnson

Ideological Consistency and Attitudinal Conf lict A Comparative Analysis of the U.S. and Canadian Supreme Courts

According to attitudinal theorists, justices on the U.S. Supreme Court decide cases largely on political preferences that fall within one dimension of ideology. The focus of this study is to test whether a unidimensional ideological model explains the voting behavior of Canadian Supreme Court justices (1992—1997). The factor-analytic results in three areas of law, two of which have never been examined in this way in Canada, provide substantial evidence of ideological voting. Yet unlike the U.S. justices of the Rehnquist court, Canadian justices exhibit a much higher degree of ideological complexity. These findings call into question the widely held assumption of unidimensional decision making that is in vogue in the U.S. literature today, and they suggest that attitudinal theorists and comparative scholars must be cognizant that multiple dimensions of attitudinal voting might occur in high courts that are not as ideologically polarized as the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Gender Influence on US District Court Decisions: Updating the Traditional Judge Attribute Model

ABSTRACT. The present study contributes to the literature on federal lower court decision‐making as well as the broader body of research on gender effects on elite behavior by showing how gender, as a determinant of behavior, is filtered through other sociological determinants of decisional behavior. Starting with the assumption that personal attributes influence decision‐making patterns, our argument is that gender effects are not direct; rather, they subtly and indirectly influence elite behavior by providing another “lens” or “layer” by which a judge will view his or her world. These effects cannot be directly observed using traditional attribute behavioral models. We test our hypotheses with data on 35,038 published decisions by federal district court judges from the 1977 to 2005 terms. The results of this analysis indicate that gender has a subtle and indirect influence on judicial behavior that is not captured by traditional judge attribute models.

Judge Gender, Critical Mass, and Decision Making in the Appellate Courts of Canada

In this study, we explore gendered patterns of voting, and whether such patterns appear only after a critical mass of female justices is reached by analyzing the votes of justices in the Supreme Court of Canada. We employ a logistic regression model of the differences in the voting behavior of male versus female justices, using the universe of Supreme Court votes from 1982 through 2007. Our analysis supports the conclusion that women vote more liberally on civil rights, equality, and private economic cases, and more conservatively on criminal cases. However, we find no evidence that indicates a need for a critical mass of women justices for them to vote their sincere preferences.

Family Matters: Justice Gender and Female Litigant Success in Family Law Cases in the Supreme Court of Canada

ABSTRACT As the first empirical study of family law cases at the Supreme Court of Canada, this study explores potential factors that lead to female litigant success in family law cases. This study seeks to further our understanding of areas of law that, in particular, impact women and families. Analyzing the universe of decisions in family law cases decided by the Supreme Court of Canada from 1982 to 2008, I find support for justice gender affecting female litigant success in family law cases. The results suggest that female justices tend to support female litigants more often than their male colleagues, and that certain legal factors are also determinants of Supreme Court decisions in family law cases. Female litigants enjoy high rates of success at the Supreme Court of Canada, with both justice-specific and case-specific factors as driving forces in decision-making.