Thanks, Steve, for your terrific article and for acknowledging my work to identify all women who have presented argument at SCOTUS! It's time for me to update the list!! Cheers.
Given that that was more than two decades ago, it seems not especially crazy to think that today’s SCOTUS argument distribution ought to more closely resemble those numbers than these.
Yes, I knew that, but that statistic tells us nothing about women's propensity to go into the kind of practice that gets one before the Supreme Court. Nor does it address the propensity of some women to take time away from their carriers to raise their families. A woman in my family, for example, graduated magna cum laude, clerked for a federal judge, became an associate at a high powered law firm, and then gave it up to have time for her children. Her husband, also an attorney, did not do that.
Those were conscious and justifiable choices, but one consequence is that this woman's career advancement is likely to be less than it would have been had she made different choices regarding her work-family life balance.
I'm unaware of any data suggesting that the 40% figure for women practicing at large law firms fails to account for those pressures. Indeed, focusing only on large law firms, the numbers before the Supreme Court are actually worse. A significant majority of the women who appear before the Court these days are government lawyers. I don't know what the "right" number is, but my anecdotal sense is that there's still a large disconnect between the number of women in private practice at the kinds of firms that regularly appear before the Court and the number of arguments delivered by women.
It may be that there is no data so for now we are stuck with anecdotes, but I am always reminded that the plural of anecdote is not "data". My experience from decades in the corporate world is that women and men tend to make different career choices and that those choices have consequences. I don't know that this is the case in law, but having observed it in other industries, my anecdotal sense is that this factor likely accounts for a significant part of the divergence regarding arguments before the Supreme Court. But, I cannot prove it.
Don’t fall victim to a scientism fallacy. The plural of anecdote *is* data, in some observational sciences like ethnography. It’s how you tease out patterns. Not everything is physics, not everything can be demonstrated through a double-blind controlled trial.
So, the sexes aren't allowed to have different preferences? Is the dearth of women in the construction trades because of illegal discrimination or because of men's greater upper body strength?
Thanks, Steve, for your terrific article and for acknowledging my work to identify all women who have presented argument at SCOTUS! It's time for me to update the list!! Cheers.
If the current percentage of women arguing before the Supreme Court is too low, what is the right percentage and why?
21 years ago, the EEOC reported that women comprised 48.3% of law school graduating classes and 40.3% of large law firms:
https://www.eeoc.gov/special-report/diversity-law-firms
Given that that was more than two decades ago, it seems not especially crazy to think that today’s SCOTUS argument distribution ought to more closely resemble those numbers than these.
Yes, I knew that, but that statistic tells us nothing about women's propensity to go into the kind of practice that gets one before the Supreme Court. Nor does it address the propensity of some women to take time away from their carriers to raise their families. A woman in my family, for example, graduated magna cum laude, clerked for a federal judge, became an associate at a high powered law firm, and then gave it up to have time for her children. Her husband, also an attorney, did not do that.
Those were conscious and justifiable choices, but one consequence is that this woman's career advancement is likely to be less than it would have been had she made different choices regarding her work-family life balance.
I'm unaware of any data suggesting that the 40% figure for women practicing at large law firms fails to account for those pressures. Indeed, focusing only on large law firms, the numbers before the Supreme Court are actually worse. A significant majority of the women who appear before the Court these days are government lawyers. I don't know what the "right" number is, but my anecdotal sense is that there's still a large disconnect between the number of women in private practice at the kinds of firms that regularly appear before the Court and the number of arguments delivered by women.
It may be that there is no data so for now we are stuck with anecdotes, but I am always reminded that the plural of anecdote is not "data". My experience from decades in the corporate world is that women and men tend to make different career choices and that those choices have consequences. I don't know that this is the case in law, but having observed it in other industries, my anecdotal sense is that this factor likely accounts for a significant part of the divergence regarding arguments before the Supreme Court. But, I cannot prove it.
Don’t fall victim to a scientism fallacy. The plural of anecdote *is* data, in some observational sciences like ethnography. It’s how you tease out patterns. Not everything is physics, not everything can be demonstrated through a double-blind controlled trial.
Fifty-one percent, for obvious reasons.
Is that 51% true about everything or only the law? The reason isn't at all obvious to me.
Everything. Percentage of the general population.
So, the sexes aren't allowed to have different preferences? Is the dearth of women in the construction trades because of illegal discrimination or because of men's greater upper body strength?