Lady Justice: The impact of female judges on jury trial verdicts in North Carolina

Abstract

This study evaluates the impact of judges’ gender on jury trial outcomes in the U.S. state of North Carolina. The identification strategy is based on conditional random assignment of judges to cases. Specifically, I take advantage of the compulsory judges’ rotation imposed by the North Carolina Constitution. The results indicate that the presence of a female judge increases of 9.64–13.50 percentage points the probability of having at least one guilty verdict from the jury and of 9.5%–13.45% increase in the proportion of guilty verdicts expressed by the jury. Additionally, I perform a series of robustness and heterogeneity checks. I also investigate the potential mechanisms driving the results, exploring the influence of the jury selection process and women’s attitudes toward the courts and sentencing.