The Language of Gender and Racial Bias in Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings

• In Event: Gender and Diversity in Judicial Politics

Abstract

This paper investigates the dynamics of race and gender at U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings held before the Senate Judiciary Committee by exploring the vocabulary of bias at three of the most dramatic hearings ever held: those of Thurgood Marshall, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh. Using both qualitative and quantitative techniques, we juxtapose the language used during the testimony about accusations of sexual impropriety at the hearings of Thomas and Kavanaugh; and the racialized language used by senators and nominees at the hearings of Thomas and Marshall. To do this, we connect Christine Blasey Ford’s 2018 experience to Anita Hill’s experience nearly 30 years earlier and show how the male nominees and senators at each hearing used similar techniques to delegitimize their accusers. We also connect the politics of gender to the politics of race at the Thomas hearings, while also showing how Thomas was subjected to racially derogatory language as pervasive – if not as overt – as was Thurgood Marshall two decades earlier. We also explore how both men used similar techniques to overcome this racial skepticism by presenting themselves as embodiments of a uniquely American story of individual struggle and success. We draw on the rich academic literature in this area to demonstrate how pervasive gendered and racially-tinged language is at these hearings in the comments and questions of senators, presidents, and even the then-nominees themselves. We also show how little the use of such language has changed over time.

Authors

• Christina L. Boyd, University of Georgia

• Paul M. Collins, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

• Lori A. Ringhand, University of Georgia