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Analysing Judgments from a Feminist Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 March 2015

Rosemary Hunter
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Abstract

This article, by Rosemary Hunter, is based on a presentation given at the national training day on ‘Law, Gender and Sexuality: Sources and Methods in Socio-Legal Research’ in May 2014, jointly sponsored by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, the Socio-Legal Studies Association and the British Library. She begins by describing the uses of judgments as sources within feminist research on judging, and then outlines three different methods of analysis employed within this research: quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis, and the newest method, that of rewriting judgments.

Keywords

judgmentsquantitative methodsqualitative methodsdiscourse analysiscontent analysisrewriting judgmentsfeminist judgment projectsfeminismlegal research
Type
Law, Gender and Sexuality: Sources and Methods in Socio-Legal Research
Information
Legal Information Management , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 8 - 11
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2015. Published by British and Irish Association of Law Librarians 

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References

Footnotes

1 E.g. Gruhl, John, Spohn, Cassia and Welch, Susan, ‘Women as Policy Makers: The Case of Trial Judges’ (1981) 25 American Journal of Political Science 308CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walker, Thomas G and Barrow, Deborah J, ‘The Diversification of the Federal Bench: Policy and Process Ramifications’ (1985) 47 Journal of Politics 596CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Westergren, Sarah, ‘Note: Gender Effects in the Courts of Appeals Revisited: The Data Since 1994’ (2004) 92 Georgetown Law Journal 689Google Scholar; Johnson, Susan W and Songer, Donald R, ‘Judge Gender and the Voting Behaviour of Justices on Two North American Supreme Courts’ (2009) 30 Justice System Journal 265Google Scholar.

2 E.g. Songer, Donald R and Crews-Meyer, Kelley A, ‘Does Judge Gender Matter? Decision-making in State Supreme Courts’ (2000) 82 Social Science Quarterly 750Google Scholar; Peresie, Jennifer L, ‘Female Judges Matter: Gender and Collegial Decisionmaking in the Federal Appellate Courts’ (2004–2005) 114 Yale Law Journal 1759Google Scholar; Chew, Pat C, ‘Judges' Gender and Employment Discrimination Cases: Emerging Evidence-Based Empirical Conclusions’ (2010–2011) 14 Journal of Gender, Race and Justice 359Google Scholar; Johnson, Susan W, Songer, Donald R and Jilani, NA, ‘Judge Gender, Critical Mass, and Decision-making in the Appellate Courts of Canada’ (2011) 32 Journal of Women, Politics and Policy 233CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Terpstra, David, ‘The Influence of the Gender and Race of the Judge and the Type of Discrimination Charge on Court Case Outcomes’ (2013) 55 International Journal of Law and Management 318CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Steffensmeier, Darrell and Hebert, Chris, ‘Women and Men Policymakers: Does the Judge's Gender Affect the Sentencing of Criminal Defendants?’ (1998–1999) 77 Social Forces 1163CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Johnson et al., ibid.

4 Songer and Crews-Meyer, above n 2.

5 Johnson, BD, ‘Judges on Trial: A Re-examination of Judicial Race and Gender Effects Across Modes of Conviction’ (2014) 25 Criminal Justice Policy Review 159CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Hunter, Rosemary, ‘Justice Marcia Neave: Case Study of a Feminist Judge’ in Schulz, Ulrike and Shaw, Gisela (eds), Gender and Judging (Hart Publishing, 2013)Google Scholar.

7 See Hunter, Rosemary, McGlynn, Clare and Rackley, Erika, ‘Feminist Judgments: An Introduction’ in Hunter, Rosemary, McGlynn, Clare and Rackley, Erika (eds), Feminist Judgments: From Theory to Practice (Hart Publishing, 2010)Google Scholar.

8 Burns, Kylie, ‘The Australian High Court and Social Facts: A Content Analysis Study’ (2012) 40 Federal Law Review 317Google Scholar; Burns, Kylie, ‘It's Not Just Policy: The Role of Social Facts in Judicial Reasoning in Negligence Cases’ (2013) 21 Torts Law Journal 73Google Scholar.

9 Burns (2012) ibid 317.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 See Diana Majury, ‘Introducing the Women's Court of Canada’, available at: http://womenscourt.ca/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Majury-Intro.pdf.

14 Special Issue: Rewriting Equality (2006) 18(1) Canadian Journal of Women and the LawGoogle ScholarPubMed, available at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/canadian_journal_of_women_and_the_law/toc/jwl18.1.html.

15 Hunter et al., above n 7. See also http://www.feministjudgments.org.uk.

16 See Douglas, Heather, Bartlett, Francesca, Luker, Trish and Hunter, Rosemary (eds), Australian Feminist Judgments: Righting and Rewriting Law (Hart Publishing, 2014)Google Scholar and http://www.law.uq.edu.au/the-australian-feminist-judgments-project.

17 See http://www.feministjudging.ie/.

18 See http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/clinic_prof/2014/08/the-us-feminist-judgments-project-call-for-applications-.html.

19 See http://ilg2.org/2014/01/16/invitation-to-participate-in-the-feminist-international-judgments-project/.

20 Brems, Eva (ed), Diversity and European Human Rights: Rewriting Judgments of the ECHR (Cambridge University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Madhumanti Mukherjee, ‘Judging in the Presence of Women as Legal Persons: Feminist Alternative to the Indian Supreme Court Judgment in Sakshi v Union of India’ (2012) 1(2) feminists@law.

22 Case C-158/96 Kohll [1998] ECR I-1931.

23 Hervey, Tamara, ‘Re-judging Social Rights in the European Union’ in de Burca, Grainne, Kilpatrick, Claire and Scott, Joanne (eds), Critical Legal Perspectives on Global Governance (Hart Publishing, 2013)Google Scholar.