Scholarship@WashULaw

Judicial Behavior in Disability Cases: Do Judge Sex and Race Matter?

Document Type

Article

Language

English (en)

Publication Date

2020

Publication Title

Politics, Groups, and Identities

Abstract

In this short Dialogues contribution, we examine whether the anecdotal evidence about judge identity and decisions in Social Security disability cases from Johnson v. Social Security Administration holds more generally in the federal district courts. To do so, we begin with an introduction to Social Security disability cases, including how they are processed, how they are reviewed by the federal district courts, and why they may provide a strong area of law for examining differences in judicial behavior for female and racial minority judges. We then turn to a review of why it is important to examine how the behavior of judges may be affected by their race and sex, including highlighting many of the key empirical findings in prior studies in this area. We then detail our preliminary data – a stratified random sample of Social Security Administration disability cases appealed into four federal district courts from 1997 to 2014 – and our variables. Our empirical analysis indicates that, as expected by theory and prior findings, racial minority judges are significantly more likely to rule in favor of disability plaintiffs than white judges. We find no evidence of differences between the behavior of male and female judges in deciding these cases. As we conclude the article, we weigh in on fruitful areas for future research in the examination of disability cases and judge sex and race.

Keywords

Judicial Behavior, Disability, Social Security, Federal Courts, Gender, Race

Publication Citation

Christina L. Boyd & Adam G. Rutkowski, Judicial Behavior in Disability Cases: Do Judge Sex and Race Matter?, 8 Politics, Groups, and Identities 834 (2020)

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