Women of the Courts Symposium: Not from Central Casting: The Amazing Rise of Women in the American Judiciary

... In 1939, when women state judges were nearly as rare as unicorns and only one woman had ever been appointed to the federal bench, Columbia Pictures released a movie titled A Woman is the Judge. ... This sense that women are interlopers on the bench has lead to situations in which male and female court personnel undermined women judges' authority. ... Some male attorneys also manifest disrespect toward female judges. ... In this symposium, we reprint an article by retired California Superior Court Judge John W. Kennedy, Jr. who describes administering the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory to 1,400 male and female judges and the bias against women judges who do not conform to either their male colleagues' or the public's expectations about how women should behave. ... The genius of the National Gender Bias Task Force Movement is that because these task forces were appointed by the courts themselves, gender bias was transformed from a problem for women to a problem of the judiciary. ...

Print Location Lynn Hecht Schafran, Women of the Courts Symposium: Not from Central Casting: The Amazing Rise of Women in the American Judiciary, 36 U. Tol. L. Rev. 953 (2005).

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Academic Publication, Report, Other • Leadership