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The Ultimate Mansplainers: Supreme Court Justices
Courtus Interruptus
Back in 2014 when Rebecca Solnit penned her essay “Men Explain Things to Me”, the term mansplaining took off. Most women could immediately identify with the phenomenon and embraced the term with mirth. Only last week, I had to call out a male friend for mansplaining. While he was surprised by my response, he quickly apologized saying that was not the way his comments (e.g. telling me how to run a survey) were meant to be interpreted. Many chuckle a bit when bringing up the term, but in reality, mansplaining and it’s similar cousin, interrupting, has a powerfully negative influence on our culture. And nowhere is it more important than at the Supreme Court. In a 2017 study, Tonja Jacobi, a law professor at Northwestern University, completes a deep dive into the number of interruptions that occur during Supreme Court arguments. The research goes back 55 years to look at the effect of gender, ideology, and seniority in the number of interruptions that occur both between Justices and with Justices and advocates arguing before them. Let’s take a quick look at what she found.
Interruptions
Jacobi’s research finds that female Justices are interrupted more than male Justices by both other male Justices and by male advocates. She also found that the Chief Justices, both Roberts, and…
