Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2021
Department
Political Science
Abstract
A major legacy of the Obama presidency was the mark he left on the federal courts with respect to increasing judicial diversity. In particular, President Obama’s appointments of women to the federal judiciary exceeded all previous presidents in terms of both absolute numbers and as a share of all judges; he also appointed a record-setting number of women of color to the lower federal courts. In this Article, I take an intersectional approach to exploring variation in the professional backgrounds, qualifications, and Senate confirmation experiences of Obama’s female appeals court appointees, comparing them with George W. Bush and Bill Clinton appointees. These data reveal that women of color appointed by Obama differ from both white women and minority men in terms of ABA ratings, the types of professional experiences they bring with them, and whether they were confirmed by a roll call vote.
ThinkIR Citation
Moyer, Laura, "Assessing President Obama’s Appointment of Women to the Federal Appellate Courts" (2021). Faculty Scholarship. 736.
https://ir.library.louisville.edu/faculty/736
DOI
10.2478/bjals-2021-0008
ORCID
0000-0002-5802-801X
Included in
Courts Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, Judges Commons, Political Science Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons
Comments
This article was originally published in British Journal of American Legal Studies, volume 10, issue 3 in 2021. https://doi.org/10.2478/bjals-2021-0008
© 2021 Laura P. Moyer, published by Sciendo. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.