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Assessing President Obama's Appointment of Women to the Federal Appellate Courts Cover

Assessing President Obama's Appointment of Women to the Federal Appellate Courts

By: Laura P. Moyer  
Open Access
|Nov 2021

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.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/bjals-2021-0008 | Journal eISSN: 2719-5864 | Journal ISSN: 2049-4092
Language: English
Page range: 433 - 455
Published on: Nov 17, 2021
Published by: Birmingham City University
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 2 issues per year

© 2021 Laura P. Moyer, published by Birmingham City University
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.