Read the passage below and check your comprehension by answering the following questions. Then “submit” your work.
Upon learning that she would be replaced on the U.S. Supreme Court by John Roberts, retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was pleased, but not completely. “He’s good in every way,” she responded, “except he’s not a woman” (Balz & Fears, 2005). Appointed in 1981, O’Connor was the first woman ever to serve on the nation’s highest court. Her disappointment that the court would once again include only one woman (Ruth Bader Ginsberg was appointed in 1993) would prove short-lived: within six years, the court would be one-third female (1).
If justice is indeed blind, the sex (or race, ethnicity, religion, etc.) of individual justices should not matter. But there is some evidence that at least gender may affect the way judges come to decisions. Consider the case of Savana Redding. A middle school student accused of supplying classmates with prescription-strength ibuprofen, she was stripped down to her underwear by two female school administrators searching for the pills. None were found. Feeling that her Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable search and seizure had been violated, Redding and her family sued the school district, and the case eventually found its way to the Supreme Court. Judging from the comments made by justices during arguments, Savana’s case looked bleak, as the justices did not seem to understand why the situation was such a big deal. Justice Stephen Breyer maintained it was normal in his experience to take off your clothes to change for gym (Lithwick, 2009). But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg took a very different view and spoke out both in the press and to her colleagues about how humiliating such an experience could be for a teenage girl at that sensitive age. The court eventually ruled that Redding’s rights had indeed been violated, in an 8–1 decision. Today, the court’s three female justices are often in agreement, but it remains unclear whether that is due to ideology (all three are fairly liberal), to gender, or to both (Liptak, 2013).
(1) Justice Sonia Sotomayor was appointed in 2009; Justice Elena Kagan was appointed in 2010.