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Judge Gender Peer Effects in the Courthouse

Özkan Eren & Naci Mocan

American Law and Economics Review2025https://doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahaf014article
AJG 2ABDC B
Weight
0.50

Abstract

We investigate whether consequential decisions made by judges are impacted by the gender composition of these judges’ peer group. Using the universe of decisions on juvenile defendants in each courthouse in a Southern state over 15 years, we estimate two-way fixed effects models leveraging random assignment of cases to judges and variations in judge peer composition generated by judicial turnover. The results show that an increase in the proportion of female peers in the courthouse causes a rise in individual judges’ propensity to incarcerate, and an increase in prison time. This effect is driven by the behavior of female judges. We examine the sensitivity of our findings to heterogeneous-robust difference-in-differences estimators for continuous and nonabsorbing treatments.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahaf014

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@article{özkan2025,
  title        = {{Judge Gender Peer Effects in the Courthouse}},
  author       = {Özkan Eren & Naci Mocan},
  journal      = {American Law and Economics Review},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahaf014},
}

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Judge Gender Peer Effects in the Courthouse

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Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

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