Gender of Judges

One the great perks of this job is the opportunity to get to know the very impressive Chief Justices of many other states. I was pleased to see some faces I recognize on the cover of the July 2010 ABA Journal, in an article called "Tipping the Scales," about the gender diversity of high courts in the south:

"Nine of the 13 state supreme courts in the South have multiple women as justices, as does the District of Columbia. Five states have three or more—the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which is that state’s court of last resort on criminal matters, has four female judges. Tennessee is one of three states with a majority of women on its supreme court. Michigan and Wisconsin are the other two. Two states have no women as justices, and neither—Idaho and Indiana—is in the South."

To round out the article, here is some more information on the courts in Texas, mostly from our Profile of Appellate and Trial Judges page. (One exception, I can just tell you that 5 of the 14 intermediate appellate courts have a woman chief justice.)  On those same courts there are 33 women justices out of 80 total.  On the district bench, 124 of 440 are women.  On the county courts of law, 72 of 231 are women. And in the justice of peace courts, 278 of 822 are women.  (Note that not every judge tells us this detail, so the numbers are not quite definitive.)