All the President’s Women: Gender and the Judiciary
Anita Hill
On February 8, Anita Hill, Professor of Social Policy and Women’s Studies, delivered the Women’s and Gender Studies Program’s spring 2006 Distinguished Faculty Lecture. One of twelve recipients of a Fletcher Fellowship this year, Professor Hill spoke on the timely subject: “All the President’s Women: Gender and the Judiciary”. Here, in her own words, is a summary of her talk:
On July 1, 2005, when Justice Sandra Day O'Connor gave her resignation to President George W. Bush, the country had an opportunity to discuss the legacy of the country’s first female Supreme Court Justice. Instead the conversation quickly turned to the simple question of whether Justice O'Connor's replacement should be a woman. With O'Connor's resignation and Chief Justice William A. Rehnquist's death shortly thereafter, President Bush also had a golden opportunity. He could secure his presidential legacy by appointing other women, or perhaps even the first Hispanic, to the Court. He chose instead to secure his policy agenda by appointing two white males, Judges John Roberts and Samuel Alito, who early in their careers worked in policy positions for President Ronald Reagan's administration.
These appointments leave the Supreme Court with only one woman and one person of color for now and perhaps for the foreseeable future. In 2006, forty years after the women's rights and civil rights movements, a nine-member Court with such limited gender and racial representation is out of touch with the principles of law employed to promote gender and racial equality. It is also out of touch with the sensibilities of the generation of which George W. Bush and his two appointees are members: the Baby Boomers. Moreover, the appointments suggest that rather than thinking that the O'Connor seat is a "woman's seat," we should be concerned that the administration has concluded that eight seats on the court are by default "men's seats."
In order to advance equality in our society we must make a concerted effort to ensure that the judiciary at every level is representative of various gender, racial and class perspectives. Law Professor Judith Resnick states the issue clearly: "In the contemporary world, where democratic commitments oblige equal access to power by persons of all colors whatever their identities, the composition of a judiciary-if all-white or all-male or all-upper class-becomes a problem of equality and legitimacy." A philosophy that follows the very principles for ending discrimination applied by the courts should thus be applied to the courts' appointment processes. Only then will the country have the benefit of a judicial system that more closely resembles it and which can better serve the causes of justice, fairness and equity.
