Her Honor: Black Women Judges’ Experiences with Disrespect and Recusal Requests in the American Judiciary

ABSTRACT

Existing scholarship has mainly focused on the experiences of Black women judges as they ascend to the bench and has largely overlooked the experiences of these judges once they reach the court. I address the topic of Black women’s experiences in the judiciary by drawing on an original survey with 163 Black women judges and centering their voices, reflections, and perspectives. These women report substantial disrespect by litigants and attorneys and share how they experience questioning about their ability to render fair decisions. These jurists’ experiences highlight how many Black women judges deal with disruptive, demeaning, intimidating, and passive-aggressive behavior, dismissive treatment, and insidious nonverbal behavior.

KEYWORDS:

• Black judges
• Judicial Diversity
• Discrimination

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This quote is included in a biography of Jane Bolin, the nation’s first Black woman state court judge. The biography is available online: https://herdacity.org/jane-bolin/.

2. This remark is the response by one of the Black women state court judges that I surveyed for my research when I asked her to share whether/how she has ever experienced any disrespect while on the bench.

3. This quote was pulled from the disqualification request submitted by Attorney Ephraim London in the case Blank v. Sullivan & Cromwell, a lawsuit that challenged the antidiscrimination principles of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. London, the defense attorney, claimed that the judge to hear the case, Constance Baker Motley, the nation’s first Black woman federal court judge, should be disqualified because she might be biased as a result of her own race and gender and a likelihood that she had personal experiences dealing with racist and/or sexist employment discrimination that would make it difficult for her to render a fair ruling. In his recusal motion, London implied that “only white men could properly preside in a sex discrimination suit” (Brown-Nagin 2017).

4. https://www.npr.org/2019/01/16/685815783/meet-Black-girl-magic-the-19-african-american-women-elected-as-judges-in-texas.

5. https://www.npr.org/2019/01/16/685815783/meet-Black-girl-magic-the-19-african-american-women-elected-as-judges-in-texas.

6. https://www.fjc.gov/.

7. Jane Bolin became the first Black woman state judge in the United States when Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia appointed her to the New York City Domestic Relations Court (i.e., Family Court) in 1939. Twenty-seven years later, Constance Baker Motley was appointed to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, one of the nation’s largest federal trial courts.

8. https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/law-admissions-lowdown/articles/what-underrepresented-law-school-applicants-should-k.

9. This report is available online: https://www.enjuris.com/students/law-school-race-2019.html.

10. https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibility/publications/model_rules_of_professional_conduct/model_rules_of_professional_conduct_preamble_scope/.

11. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-judges-misconduct/.

12. This response rate may be shocking to readers who anticipate high response rates (i.e., 30%+), but this is quite typical for a population of elites that, for the most part, choose not to participate directly in political science research. One discernible pattern amongst the judges that responded to the survey is that they are trial court judges, but this is not surprising because Black judges are overrepresented amongst trial court judges and not appellate-level judges. Beyond that pattern, there are no age patterns, and no region patterns in terms of who responded to the survey and the responses to the survey.

13. https://www.law.com/texaslawyer/2020/01/16/judges-dont-like-your-recusal-requests-and-theres-data-to-prove-it/?slreturn=20210603045154; https://iaals.du.edu/sites/default/files/documents/publications/judicial_recusal_procedures.pdf.

14. Even though they were not writing about judges, Leape et al.’s (2012) categorization of disrespect is a helpful guide that I consulted when analyzing the experiences with disrespect that Black women judges reported in the survey. https://www.ismp.org/resources/disrespectful-behaviors-their-impact-why-they-arise-and-persist-and-how-address-them-part.

15. https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/26/us/abdus-salaam-death-ruled-suicide/index.html.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Taneisha N. Means

Taneisha N. Means is an Assistant Professor of Political Science on the Class of 1951 Chair at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY. Her research and teaching interests are in Racial and Ethnic Politics, Judicial Politics, and American Political Behavior and Identities. She combines both qualitative and quantitative methods to answer research questions at the intersection of race and judicial politics. Her current research projects examine the political identities and behaviors of 21^st century black US judges.