has also garnered significant attention due to both the political leanings of the justices and their race and gender. With this backdrop, researchers from UNC Charlotte, University of Louisville, University of Georgia and Brigham Young University analyzed how the race and gender of federal judges might be impacting judicial processes.
After analyzing out-of-circuit citations to a sample of more than 2,000 published federal appellate decisions from 2009 to 2016, the researchers found that majority opinions written by female judges receive significantly fewer subsequent citations from other courts than those by men—largely because of disparities in citing Black and Latina women.
Over the five-year period studied, female judges received 1.4 external citations to their opinions compared to 1.63 citations to opinions written by equivalent male judges. While that difference may initially seem small, it really hits home when accumulated over a career. An average judge produces 53.