Statistics

FORSTER-LONG’S GENDER DIVERSITY SURVEY

Since 2008, Forster-Long, Inc. and the National Association of Women Judges have partnered to raise awareness of gender representation in American courts. Their annual Gender Ratio Summary, which is a yearly glance at the distribution of male and female judges throughout the United States in both federal and state judiciaries, is profiled for each of the listed years below. * Source: Forster-Long, LLC. Visit www.forster-long.com for more information.

THE GAVEL GAP

From The American Constitution Society:

For most people, state courts are the “law” for all effective purposes. But we know surprisingly little about state court judges, despite their central and powerful role. Unlike their counterparts on the federal courts, much of the relevant information is non-public, and in many states, not even collected in a systematic way. This lack of information is especially significant because judges’ backgrounds have important implications for the work of courts and the degree to which the public has confidence in their decisions.

In order to address this serious shortcoming in our understanding of America’s courts, we have constructed an unprecedented database of state judicial biographies. This dataset—the State Bench Database--includes more than 10,000 current sitting judges on state courts of general jurisdiction in all 50 states. We use it to examine the gender, racial, and ethnic composition of state courts, which we then compare to that of the general population in each state. We find that courts are not representative of the people whom they serve. We call this disparity The Gavel Gap.

Visit https://www.acslaw.org/analysis/reports/gavel-gap/ to download their report, and peruse their data.