Flutterby™! : Gender & Supreme Court

Let Me Just Interrupt You": Estimating Gender Effects in Supreme Court Oral Arguments

Abstract Oral argument is the most public and visible part of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision-making process. Yet, what if some advocates are treated differently when they argue their case before the Court, solely because of aspects of their identity unrelated to the case? In this work, we use a causal inference framework to quantify the effect of an advocate’s gender on interruptions of advocates. Leveraging nearly four decades of U.S. Supreme Court oral argument transcript data, we identify a clear and consistent gender effect, with female advocates interrupted more frequently than male advocates. We demonstrate that, for most justices, the gender effect dwarfs other influences on justice interruption behavior including ideological alignment between justices and advocates. Through a series of corroborative analyses, we further demonstrate the consistency and strength of the gendered interruption behavior of the justices.