Gender, Ideology, And Dominance In Supreme Court Oral Arguments

Gender bias in political discourse has been demonstrated in many settings, including the US Supreme Court. We investigate the effects of ideology and gender in verbal interactions during Supreme Court oral arguments. We theorize that all justices possess unconscious gender schemas that lead them to speak more during presentations by women but that liberal and female justices likely have conscious egalitarian values that diminish the manifestation of gender schemas. We find that conservative justices speak more when female lawyers are arguing but that liberal justices show no such effect, suggesting that consciously held attitudes can mitigate the expression of unconscious gender schemas.