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SYMPOSIUM
REWRITING JUDICIAL OPINIONS AND THE FEMINIST
SCHOLARLY PROJECT
Linda L. Berger, Kathryn M. Stanchi & Bridget J. Crawford*
In 1995, the authors of a law review article examining feminist judging
focused on the existing social science data concerning women judges and compared
the voting records and opinions of the only female Justices on the U.S. Supreme
Court: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O'Connor.' Based on this review, the
authors concluded that appointing more women as judges would make little
difference to judicial outcomes or processes.2 The authors accused those who
advocated for more women on the bench of having a hidden feminist agenda3 and
bluntly concluded that [b]y any measure, feminist judges fit very uneasily in most
conceptions of the proper role of the judicial system.4
More than twenty years later, scholars have a better understanding of what
constitutes feminist judging; moving beyond the gender of those involved in
C 2018 Linda L. Berger, Kathryn M. Stanchi & Bridget J. Crawford. Individuals and
nonprofit institutions may reproduce and distribute copies of this Symposium in any format, at or
below cost, for educational purposes, so long as each copy identifies the authors, provides a citation
to the Notre Dame Law Review Online, and includes this provision and copyright notice.
* Linda Berger is the Family Foundation Professor of Law at the University of Nevada, Las
Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law. Kathryn Stanchi is the Jack E. Feinberg '57 Professor of
Litigation and an Affiliated Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies at Temple
University Beasley School of Law. Bridget Crawford is a Professor of Law at the Elisabeth Haub
School of Law at Pace University.
1 Michael E. Solimine & Susan E. Wheatley, Rethinking Feminist Judging, 70 IND. L.J. 891,
919 (1995) (The weight of the evidence demonstrates that most female judges do not decide cases
in a distinctively feminist or feminine manner.); cf Sharon Elizabeth Rush, Feminist Judging: An
Introductory Essay, 2 S. CAL. REV. L. & WOMEN'S STUD. 609, 610 n.2 (1993) (explaining that the
concept of feminist judging is not confined to women judges but focuses more on the idea that
we should move away from traditional legal decisionmaking (which generally promotes white male
hegemony) and begin to reconstruct our legal system to consider the views of women, people of
color, gays and lesbians, and other subordinated groups).
2 See Solimine & Wheatley, supra note 1, at 899.
3 Id. at 892 n.8 (It is precisely the call for feminist judging, which we think fairly
characterizes much of the literature advocating more female judges, that bears the brunt of most of
our criticism. Nonetheless, our primary concern is with the call for more female judges, regardless
of whether they purport to have a 'feminist' agenda.).
4 Id. at 893.
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