Privileged to Wear the Robe: The Role of Race and Gender in Judicial Recruitment

• In Event: Pathways to Power

Abstract

Judicial politics scholars interested in issues of judicial selection tend to focus on methods of selection as a means of promoting or hindering increased diversity in state and federal judiciaries, or as a method of promoting policy change through the courts. Since the advent of the Attitudinal and Strategic Models of judicial behavior, much of judicial politics research has focused on the effects of characteristics like ideology, partisan identity, race, and gender on the outcomes of cases and the likelihood of policy change. Students of selection methods have investigated the likelihood of success when women and racial minorities seek seats on state courts of last resort. This paper, however, takes a different approach to the issues of judicial recruitment and, in doing so, seeks to investigate the privileges certain identities offer when candidates decide to pursue judicial office. Using in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 26 judges at the federal and state levels, including both trial and appellate judges, I argue that judges who are women or who are racial minorities must often be encouraged or recruited to seek judicial office whereas white and male judges are more likely to seek judicial office on their own. Utilizing judges’ own accounts of when they decided to seek judicial office and how they came to their first judicial office, I am able to provide new insight into how judicial actors view the attainability of their offices and the ways in which traditionally privileged identities find easier access to the bench. This project will provide political science and judicial politics scholars with new insight into issues of judicial selection and recruitment by taking a step back from traditional analyses of success rates for women and minority candidates and investigating who is more likely to seek judicial office in the first place. While this project is constrained by only including successful candidates (judges) in the sample, it provides a proof-of-concept and highlights the need for future research into the self-selection process as part of the recruitment of judicial officers.

Author

• Brenden Higashi, Missouri Southern State University