Now We’ll See Who’s Objective!

The elevation of a woman, Sandra Day O’Connor, to the U.S. Supreme Court for the first time has sparked renewed concern as to whether women judges can be objective on the bench, particularly in dealing with such highly emotional and female-oriented issues as abortion and rape. Even the chief justice of that high court is alleged to have expressed reservations in this regard. This erroneous and presumptuous apprehension is premised on sexually stereotypical thinking which historically has permeated so much of our male-dominated culture, including the legal and judicial professions. Women judges, like those of the male sex, have the intellect, education and experience to decide the thousands of civil and criminal cases that come before them on the facts and the applicable law. Indeed, being acutely aware of their high visibility, women are particularly sensitive to their judicial role. Women judges are thus less likely than entrenched and secure male judges to indulge biases in deciding cases. It is a startling revelation that over the decades so few among us have questioned the objectivity of white Anglo-Saxon male judges who have been presiding over us all, male and female, of every color and ethnic background. Two male law professors who had the temerity to address the subject in the N.Y.U. Law Review in 1971 found, as might be expected, that male judges bring to the bench a variety of prejudices stemming from their sexual, ideological, cultural, ethnic, religious, economic