Vol. 34 No. 04 (July 2024) pp. 31-35SUPREME BIAS: GENDER AND RACE IN U.S. SUPREME COURT CONFIRMATION HEARINGS, by Christina L. Boyd, Paul M. Collins, Jr., and Lori A. Ringhand. Stanford University Press, 2023. pp. 290. Cloth $120.00. ISBN: 9781503632691. Paper $30.00. ISBN: 9781503636880.
Reviewed by Elizabeth A. Lane. Department of Political Science. North Carolina State University. Email: elane3@ncsu.edu.
Supreme Court confirmation hearings are arguably the most salient job interviews imaginable. For the most part, nominees have very similar backgrounds—degrees from top law schools, impressive clerkships, and previous experiences as judges and advocates. These nominees, however, are not treated equally during Senate Judiciary Committee (SJC) hearings. Ample research attributes rapid-fire, difficult, or even rude questioning to ideological differences between senators and nominees (Farganis and Wedeking 2014; Schoenherr, Lane, and Armaly 2020). That, however, is not the full story.
In the timely new book, Supreme Bias: Gender and Race in U.S. Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings, authors Christina L. Boyd, Paul M. Collins, Jr., and Lori A. Ringhand push the field beyond partisan politics to consider other aspects that influence the dynamics of Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Specifically, they examine how gender and racial stereotypes, which color social interactions for so many, manifest in unequal treatment during these salient events.
One (of many) of the great things about this book is the background information provided in the first two chapters. Chapter 1 provides historical information on how the federal judiciary slowly diversified over time. It begins with stories of gender and racial diversity on the Supreme Court specifically, then moves to broader federal judicial diversity. Like other work on this topic, it focuses on Jimmy Carter’s presidency as a significant inflection point but, importantly, it provides a more comprehensive overview dating back to FDR’s presidency. The authors do so to make the point that, despite the fact that the federal judiciary is not a representative institution, descriptive diversity increases trust, confidence, and institutional legitimacy in significant ways.
The second chapter explains the Supreme Court confirmation process from vacancy to presidential selection, and the Senate’s role in the confirmation. It is a thorough, yet concise, historical overview of important moments and changes in this process, and how it has been studied by political scientists. In doing so, Boyd, Collins, and Ringhand provide descriptive data on issues addressed during these hearings. Specifically, a descriptive examination of how race, gender, and civil rights issues are discussed during these proceedings.
The third chapter is where Boyd, Collins, and Ringhand lay out their theory that is tested in the subsequent empirical chapters. The authors draw on social identity theory to explain how individuals sort themselves into groups based on traits like gender or race. From this, a dominant “in-group” emerges. In the U.S. Senate, white men have long been the dominant group and use their status to protect their power and perceived superiority over the out-group, which in this context are female nominees and nominees of color. Typically, this manifests in biased treatment of out-group members as a result of negative stereotypes held by the dominant group. Put differently, the authors expect these dynamics to shape interactions between senators and nominees, which results in the negative treatment of female nominees and nominees of color from white male senators. Of course, these interactions happen in the partisan political environment that the authors believe conditions the treatment of out-group nominees. That is, senators are on their best behavior with nominees, including women and people of color, selected by a co-partisan president. Nominees selected by an opposing party president, however, are subjected to the worst treatment, and this is exacerbated for female and non-white nominees.
Before discussing the empirical chapters, it is worth noting the extensive data collection accomplished by the authors to examine confirmation hearing dynamics. The authors collect and examine every utterance from senators and nominees for all confirmation hearings between 1939-2022, including the historic hearing of now-Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. This is an important achievement given the topic of their book and very impressive considering this book was published in 2023, shortly after Justice Jackson’s hearing. The data lends itself to rich examples the authors include throughout each chapter of the book, providing important contextualization for readers. The entire book, or even a single chapter, would be an excellent addition to any undergraduate or graduate course syllabus. In tailoring the analysis to their in- and out-group theory, the authors focus their examination on gender stereotyping to male senators’ exchanges with nominees and their analyses on racial stereotyping to white senators’ exchanges. As mentioned, white male senators have historically dominated the Senate, particularly the SJC, so this does not reduce their sample. It also lends itself to a straightforward interpretation of their model results, which makes the book more accessible for readers.
In the first application of their theory, Boyd, Collins, and Ringhand contend that white and male senators will question the professional competency of out-group nominees more than in-group nominees. It is well documented that women and people of color face presumptions of incompetence in positions of leadership generally, specifically in the legal profession (Collins, Dumas, and Moyer 2017a; 2017b; 2018; Melaku 2019). The authors operationalize professional competence in the hearing setting in two ways: questions on judicial philosophy, and questions on subject matter bias. Questions on judicial philosophy are aimed at understanding how a nominee understands and interprets the Constitution—an ability that is necessary for a position on the U.S. Supreme Court. Many senators have stated judicial philosophy is a nominee’s most important qualification. Another important qualification is the ability to fairly decide cases on issues that nominees are assumed to possess expertise in due to their identities—for female nominees, gender discrimination and abortion, and for nominees of color, racial discrimination, and crime. The authors find that different-party senators ask female nominees more questions about their judicial philosophy than male nominees. And all female nominees are subject to a greater number of questions on gender discrimination and abortion regardless of a senator’s partisan affiliation. While nominees of color are not any more likely to receive judicial philosophy questions, they must handle more questions about crime compared to white nominees from all senators. They also must address issues of racial discrimination from opposing party senators more than white nominees.
One of the most important contributions of the book comes from Chapter 5, where Boyd, Collins, and Ringhand examine interruption patterns during confirmation hearings. Interruptions reinforce sex- and race-based stereotypes because in-group members frequently interrupt out-group members to bolster dominance and power. Importantly, the authors distinguish between intrusive interruptions—those that attempt to take over the conversational floor in a hostile manner—and positive interruptions, which signal support for the speaker by expressing solidarity or finishing the speaker’s thought. That is, female and non-white nominees, due to their lower status are perceived as weak, needing assistance, or less competent, and as a result are more likely to receive positive interruptions than other nominees. Regardless of intention, both types of interruptions emanate from a status differential, demonstrate bias, and ultimately disrupt the nominee and prevent them from speaking. Female and non-white nominees are intrusively interrupted at a disproportionate rate by out-party senators; female nominees also face a greater number of positive interruptions.
The final way the authors examine in-group biases towards out-group nominees is through senator word choice. Using Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC) dictionaries, they capture the positive and negative sentiment of senators’ remarks as well as senators’ use of differential or distinguishing language. In-group members are expected to use more negative words and differentiating words towards out-group members to enforce negative stereotypes and distinctions. When being questioned by different-party senators, female nominees are on the receiving end of significantly more negative and differentiating language, whereas nominees of color receive more differentiating words from senators, regardless of partisan affiliation.
Chapter 7 provides unique insight into the gender and racial dynamics at Supreme Court confirmation hearings by examining the special sessions held for Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford during the Thomas and Kavanaugh hearings. Oftentimes, these sessions are excluded from analyses of Supreme Court nomination proceedings due to their unique nature, and to my knowledge, this is one of the first systematic comparisons between the two events. Once again, the unit of analysis is each statement made during these special sessions, coded based on whether the senators’ statements and questions were related to factual issues, accuser timing and motives, or if the witness was coached. The results reveal that Christine Blasey Ford was subject to fewer statements from either party related to timing and motive compared to Anita Hill, which the authors attribute to cultural changes related to the #MeToo movement. And while Democrats also asked fewer coaching questions during Blasey Ford’s special session compared to Hill’s, Republicans asked more than the Democrats in both hearings. Republicans, however, assigned these types of questions to Prosecutor Rachel Mitchell in the Blasey Ford hearing instead of asking them directly.
In the penultimate chapter of the book, the authors try to appease any readers who may have been unsatisfied by their decision to examine only white and male senators in Chapters 4-6. In this chapter, the authors examine if social identity theory holds for senators who are not members of the dominant in-group. They can only do this descriptively due to the lack of diversity in the Senate historically; however, the analysis still yields interesting results (all of which are given with important caveats due to the small-N). Female senators question the competence of nominees similar to their male counterparts, but unlike male senators, they interrupt male nominees more and use more positive language toward female nominees. Furthermore, senators of color pose very few questions to nominees of color and direct all questions of competency toward white nominees.
Supreme Bias is an essential read for anyone interested in race or gender politics. It is a skillful adaptation of interdisciplinary theories applied to one of the most salient events in American politics. Each chapter masterfully builds on the theory laid out in Chapter 3, while making unique contributions in operationalizing bias with the competing identity and partisan dynamics. It should be added to any reading list that includes other important work on Supreme Court confirmations like Farganis and Wedeking (2014) and Cameron and Kastellec (2023) because of the authors’ contributions, and particularly the important context it provides. And, of course, like any good work, Boyd, Collins, and Ringhand’s book creates new avenues for research. For example, how do positive interruptions influence oral argument dynamics? And how do gender and race influence nominees’ responses to senators during confirmation hearings? Boyd, Collins, and Ringhand laid the groundwork for future interesting research while also addressing timely concerns of how diversity in American institutions impacts individual experiences.
REFERENCES:
Cameron, C. M., & Kastellec, J. P. (2023). Making the Supreme Court: The Politics of Appointments, 1930-2020. Oxford University Press.
Collins, T. A., Dumas, T. L., & Moyer, L. P. (2017a). Being Part of the “Home Team”: Perceptions of Professional Interactions with Outsider Attorneys. Journal of Law and Courts, 5(1), 141-171.
Collins, T. A., Dumas, T. L., & Moyer, L. P. (2017b). Intersecting Disadvantages: Race, Gender, and Age Discrimination Among Attorneys. Social Science Quarterly, 98(5), 1642-1658.
Collins, T. A., Dumas, T. L., & Moyer, L. P. (2018). Tipping the Scales of Justice: Perceptions of Unfair Treatment in the Courtroom. Justice System Journal, 39(4), 303-321.
Farganis, D., & Wedeking, J. (2014). Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings in the US Senate: Reconsidering the Charade. University of Michigan Press.
Melaku, T. M. (2019). You Don't Look Like a Lawyer: Black Women and Systemic Gendered Racism. Rowman & Littlefield.
Schoenherr, J. A., Lane, E. A., & Armaly, M. T. (2020). The Purpose of Senatorial Grandstanding during Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings. Journal of Law and Courts, 8(2), 333-358.
© Copyright 2024 by author, Elizabeth A. Lane.
