Women of the Court

WHEN ASKED IN INTERVIEWS ABOUT THE IDEAL number of women on the Supreme Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a ready response: nine. And why not, she continued: for most of American history, the court was made up of nine men, “and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.”

To date, of course, we’ve had just four: Sandra Day O’Connor, Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. This is admittedly a small sample size. Yet with about a quarter of federal judgeships filled by women as of 2019, the presence of O’Connor, Ginsburg, Kagan and Sotomayor on the court presents an opportunity to ask the woman question. Specifically, can we see a difference in the procedure or substance of the court because there have been women on the scene?

The idea has been around at least since 1917 when Susan Glaspell published the short story “A Jury of Her Peers,” based on a case she