Abstract

Do judges follow public opinion when they decide cases that present related issues over which the public has differing ideological views? This study addresses this question by comparing the U.S. District Court behavior in race and gender discrimination cases. By measuring public opinion on two issue areas that raise similar legal questions, I provide a better estimate of the effect of public opinion with fewer confounding variables relating to the agenda of the federal courts. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I show that district court judges are more likely to vote liberally in gender discrimination cases than in race discrimination cases when public opinion on gender becomes relatively more liberal than public opinion on race. This holds even when including a series of important covariates such as demographic information about the judges. This paper thus provides further support for a counterintuitive claim in the literature: unelected judges may nonetheless respond to public opinion.

摘要

法官在审理涉及公众意识形态不同的相关问题的案件时，是否遵循民意？本研究通过比较美国地方法院在种族和性别歧视案件中的行为来解决这个问题。通过衡量引发类似法律问题的两个问题领域的公众舆论，我可以更好地估计公众舆论的影响，同时减少与联邦法院议程相关的混淆变量。使用差异中的差异方法，我表明当关于性别的公众舆论变得比关于种族的公众舆论更加自由时，地方法院法官在性别歧视案件中比在种族歧视案件中更有可能自由投票。即使包括一系列重要的协变量，例如关于法官的人口统计信息，这也是成立的。因此，本文进一步支持了文献中的一个违反直觉的主张：非民选法官仍可能对公众舆论做出反应。