Women of the Courts Symposium: State High Courts and Divorce: The Impact of Judicial Gender

This article is the latest in a series of studies of state high court decisions in the area of divorce law. Our first paper was a case study, over a thirteen year period, of the Michigan State Supreme Court. We found that both Republican and Democratic, Caucasian, female justices were likely to transcend party lines and vote with their sister judges to uphold the position of the female litigant in divorce cases about 60% of the time. African-American and Caucasian male justices also crossed party lines to vote together to uphold the position of the male litigant about 55% of the time. We subsequently expanded our case study to include two more states, Wisconsin and Minnesota, and found similar results.

Print Location Eliane Martin & Barry Pyle, Women of the Courts Symposium: State High Courts and Divorce: The Impact of Judicial Gender, 36 U. Tol. L. Rev. 923 (2005).

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