The women of SCOTUS — some of whom are interrupted by their colleagues far too often.
When one thinks of oral arguments at the Supreme Court, the focus is usually upon the justices’ near constant and persistent questioning and interruption of the attorney advocates arguing their cases before the highest court in America, not upon the interactions between the justices themselves.
Adam Feldman of Empirical SCOTUS decided to turn the tables and examine how often the justices were interrupting each other, rather than how often justices were interrupting those who were arguing cases before them. Here’s one chart that shows a rather disturbing trend:
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Justice interrupted? (Chart via Adam Feldman / Empirical SCOTUS)
Justices Sotomayor and Kagan were the most interrupted justices of all, with 57 and 50 interruptions, respectively. According to Feldman, with 59 interruptions total thus far in this Term alone, Justice Kennedy is behind the vast majority of the interruptions at the Supreme Court. Justice Kennedy was responsible for 14 of Justice Sotomayor’s 57 interruptions, and 13 of Justice Ginsburg’s 31 interruptions. Chief Justice Roberts also had a high frequency of interruptions, having done so 53 times, with about half of his interruptions reserved for Justices Kagan and Sotomayor, logging 13 interruptions each.
In an interview with Stephanie Mencimer of Mother Jones, Feldman offered a few possibilities as to why Justices Sotomayor and Kagan kept getting cut off:
[Feldman] suggests that because Kagan is the court’s most junior member, she “tends to be deferential” to her more senior colleagues. Sotomayor, meanwhile, has a tendency to start thoughts without finishing them. (That’s a problem Ginsburg doesn’t have; she also tends to be the first justice out the gate to ask a question during oral arguments, setting up the later confrontations.)
“The male Justices (Thomas excluded) also appear more aggressive in their approaches than either Kagan or Ginsburg,” Feldman says. “Sotomayor will assert herself but she doesn’t always follow through.” Feldman posits that because of the “history of the Court as a male-dominated institution that only recently (in its history) had a female confirmed,” it’s not immune to the same gender dynamics feminist scholars have been documenting in other, less lofty settings over the past 40 years.
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Men may have a hard time letting women talk without interrupting them, but this isn’t the type of behavior one expects from the legal profession’s judicial role models. Perhaps if another woman were nominated and confirmed to the Supreme Court, she could help level the playing field when it comes to interruptions on the nation’s highest bench.
Interruptions and References [Empirical SCOTUS via Non-Sequiturs: 05.26.16]
Even Female Supreme Court Justices Get Interrupted a Lot by Men [Mother Jones]
These two justices are the most interrupted in oral arguments; is a gender dynamic at play? [ABA Journal]
Staci Zaretsky is an editor at Above the Law. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. Follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.