John Szmer
Biographic Data
| ID | 1492977 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John Szmer |
| GIVEN NAMES | John |
| FAMILY NAME | Szmer |
| SIGNATURE | SZMER J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of North Carolina at Charlotte |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2702-0565 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 122 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
When the Courtiers Return to the Marble Palace: The Impact of U.S. Supreme Court Lawyers’ Prior Appellate Clerkship Experiences
Most Supreme Court (SCOTUS) clerk studies explore selection, or impact, during the clerkship. The existing research examining the benefits of clerking for those returning to the Court suggests relational expertise from clerking for a specific justice, not process expertise from the clerkship, enhances SCOTUS oral argument success. Our study suggests the benefits of prior appellate clerkships likely stem from both relational and process expertise.…
A Fresh Perspective: Legal Team Gender Composition and Brief Quality at the Supreme Court
Public debates rage over the importance of diversity. In attempts to inform such discourse, political scientists generally focus on individual-level characteristics. This approach ignores that small groups lie at the heart of governmental and societal work. Drawing from research on business and management stressing group composition is consequential for outcomes, we explore how the presence of higher proportions of female attorneys in explicit ro…
Political tax cycles in the US states: Opportunism versus ideological sincerity in governors' revenue proposals
Do politicians behave opportunistically regarding their tax proposals during the election cycle, or do they maintain ideological sincerity? We examine U.S. governors' revenue proposals between the years of 1989 and 2018 to assess gubernatorial behavior during election years. We find that governors, in general, do indeed follow a political budget cycle where they request lower revenues during election years. However, this finding is largely driven…
Who Shapes the Law? Gender and Racial Bias in Judicial Citations
In this letter, we assess whether the contributions of judges from underrepresented groups are undervalued or overlooked, thereby reducing these judges' influence on legal policy. Drawing on an original dataset of discretionary citations to over 2,000 published federal appellate decisions, we find that the majority of opinions written by female judges receive less attention from other courts than those by similarly situated men and that this is l…
“I haven't come a long way, and I'm not a baby”: Task assignment and diversity of the Supreme Court bar
Objective Gender disparities in litigation task assignment are not limited to the trial court context; they are present in even the highest of courts in the United States. We explore and seek to explain the gendered patterns of participation by lawyers arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court. Methods After quantitatively describing participation by female attorneys in Supreme Court litigation, we use logistic regression and fractional logit, respec…
All eyes are on you: Gender, race, and opinion writing on the US Courts of Appeals
Because stereotyping affects individual assessments of ability and because of socializing experiences in the law, we argue that women and judges of color, while well-credentialed, feel pressure to work harder than their white male peers to demonstrate their competence. Using an original dataset of published appellate court opinions from 2008-2016, we find that majority opinions authored by female and non-white judges go farther to explain and jus…
Diversity, consensus, and decision making: Evidence from the U.S. Courts of Appeals
In this article, we identify key theoretical perspectives from the literature in social and organizational psychology on diversity and workgroups and apply these concepts to an analysis of decision making in the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Using data from twelve circuits over two decades, we leverage the diversification of the federal appellate bench to investigate the nature of the relationship between changes to a court’s gender and racial composit…
Status characteristics and their intersectionality: Majority opinion assignment in state supreme courts
We test whether justices’ traits – race, gender, age, previous judicial experience, education, and tenure – are associated with opinion assignment patterns as suggested by status characteristics theory. Female justices were more likely to be asked to write the majority opinion, particularly if the case raised a “women’s issue.” In complex cases, however, both female and African American justices were less likely to be selected to write the majori…
Race and Gender Bias in Three Administrative Contexts: Impact on Work Assignments in State Supreme Courts
Party Capability and the US Courts of Appeals: Understanding Why the “Haves” Win
While many studies have examined party capability theory, few have empirically examined the potential causal mechanisms underlying the theory. We do this by combining quantitative analyses with qualitative data drawn from interviews with over 60 US courts of appeals judges. We find that the “haves,” or repeat players, hire better lawyers and that these lawyers independently contribute to the success of the repeat players. We also find that the ad…
Gender, Race, and Dissensus on State Supreme Courts
Objectives The objectives of this study were to integrate multiple streams of research on judicial dissensus to better understand the causes of state court of last resort justices’ decisions to dissent. The study particularly focused on the relationship between dissent and gender and race (and their intersection) at the individual and panel level. Methods We employed probit regression with clustered standard errors of the population of state cour…
The Impact of Attorney Gender on Decision Making in the United States Courts of Appeals
Despite a growing recognition of the influence of gender in the policymaking arena, few scholars have studied the relationship between lawyer gender and decision making on appellate courts. This article examines this relationship in the context of the United States Courts of Appeals, where there have been a greater number of female judges for a longer period of time. The results of the analysis suggest that, in the average Courts of Appeals case,…
Race and Gender Bias in Three Administrative Contexts: Impact on Work Assignments in State Supreme Courts
Do certain types of administrative processes better inhibit race and gender prejudices that may surface in the public workplace? We compare the effects of three distinct administrative settings on race, gender, and other biases in the workload assignments of state supreme court justices—important public policy making settings that have been understudied in public administration. In particular, we model the extent to which majority opinion–writing…
Explaining Dissent on the Supreme Court of Canada
While there is an extensive literature on the causes of dissensus on appellate courts in the US, few empirical studies exist of the causes of dissent in Canadian Supreme Court. The current study seeks to close that gap in the literature, proposing and then testing what we call a Canadian model of dissent. We find that the likelihood of dissent is strongly related to four broad factors that appear to exert independent influence on whether the Cour…
Women Lawyers before the Supreme Court of Canada
Recent work by Szmer, Sarver, and Kaheny (2010) exploring US Supreme Court decision making has suggested that lawyer gender might play a role in influencing judicial voting behaviour. Specifically, while women lawyers were not revealed to have a more difficult time winning cases before the US Supreme Court, the study did suggest they face a tougher challenge in gaining support from the more conservative justices on that bench. Here, we test wheth…
Have We Come a Long Way, Baby? The Influence of Attorney Gender on Supreme Court Decision Making
While the impact of an attorney's sex has been examined with respect to trial court processes (e.g., jury decision making), no one has previously studied its effects on appellate court decision making. In this article, we argue that the application of gender schemas by some justices results in a devaluing of the arguments made by women litigators. Our findings suggest that women orally arguing attorneys are less likely to receive a favorable vote…
DoestheLawyer Matter? Influencing Outcomes on the Supreme Court of Canada
This article examines the impact of lawyer capability on the decisionmaking of the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC). Extending prior attorney capability studies of U.S. judicial decisionmaking, we test three lawyer variables: prior litigation experience, litigation team size, and Queen's Counsel designation. We find that the first two variables have a statistically significant and positive relationship with the SCC's decisions in non-reference-quest…
The Effects of Information on the Accuracy of Presidential Assessments of Supreme Court Nominee Preferences
The Effects of Information on the Accuracy of Presidential Assessments of Supreme Court Nominee Preferences
Models of presidential success in the judicial appointment process assume that a president selects a nominee who will maximize his influence on the Court. The models assume that the president accurately assesses the preferences of potential nominees. We argue that these perceptions are subject to systematic errors. Specifically, the amount of information available to the evaluator (the president and his staff) of a Supreme Court nominee's policy …
DoestheLawyer Matter? Influencing Outcomes on the Supreme Court of Canada
This article examines the impact of lawyer capability on the decisionmaking of the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC). Extending prior attorney capability studies of U.S. judicial decisionmaking, we test three lawyer variables: prior litigation experience, litigation team size, and Queen's Counsel designation. We find that the first two variables have a statistically significant and positive relationship with the SCC's decisions in non-reference-quest…
Race and Gender Bias in Three Administrative Contexts: Impact on Work Assignments in State Supreme Courts
Do certain types of administrative processes better inhibit race and gender prejudices that may surface in the public workplace? We compare the effects of three distinct administrative settings on race, gender, and other biases in the workload assignments of state supreme court justices—important public policy making settings that have been understudied in public administration. In particular, we model the extent to which majority opinion–writing…
The Impact of Attorney Gender on Decision Making in the United States Courts of Appeals
Despite a growing recognition of the influence of gender in the policymaking arena, few scholars have studied the relationship between lawyer gender and decision making on appellate courts. This article examines this relationship in the context of the United States Courts of Appeals, where there have been a greater number of female judges for a longer period of time. The results of the analysis suggest that, in the average Courts of Appeals case,…
Women Lawyers before the Supreme Court of Canada
Recent work by Szmer, Sarver, and Kaheny (2010) exploring US Supreme Court decision making has suggested that lawyer gender might play a role in influencing judicial voting behaviour. Specifically, while women lawyers were not revealed to have a more difficult time winning cases before the US Supreme Court, the study did suggest they face a tougher challenge in gaining support from the more conservative justices on that bench. Here, we test wheth…
All eyes are on you: Gender, race, and opinion writing on the US Courts of Appeals
Because stereotyping affects individual assessments of ability and because of socializing experiences in the law, we argue that women and judges of color, while well-credentialed, feel pressure to work harder than their white male peers to demonstrate their competence. Using an original dataset of published appellate court opinions from 2008-2016, we find that majority opinions authored by female and non-white judges go farther to explain and jus…
Gender, Race, and Dissensus on State Supreme Courts
Objectives The objectives of this study were to integrate multiple streams of research on judicial dissensus to better understand the causes of state court of last resort justices’ decisions to dissent. The study particularly focused on the relationship between dissent and gender and race (and their intersection) at the individual and panel level. Methods We employed probit regression with clustered standard errors of the population of state cour…
Party Capability and the US Courts of Appeals: Understanding Why the “Haves” Win
While many studies have examined party capability theory, few have empirically examined the potential causal mechanisms underlying the theory. We do this by combining quantitative analyses with qualitative data drawn from interviews with over 60 US courts of appeals judges. We find that the “haves,” or repeat players, hire better lawyers and that these lawyers independently contribute to the success of the repeat players. We also find that the ad…
Who Shapes the Law? Gender and Racial Bias in Judicial Citations
In this letter, we assess whether the contributions of judges from underrepresented groups are undervalued or overlooked, thereby reducing these judges' influence on legal policy. Drawing on an original dataset of discretionary citations to over 2,000 published federal appellate decisions, we find that the majority of opinions written by female judges receive less attention from other courts than those by similarly situated men and that this is l…
The Effects of Information on the Accuracy of Presidential Assessments of Supreme Court Nominee Preferences
Models of presidential success in the judicial appointment process assume that a president selects a nominee who will maximize his influence on the Court. The models assume that the president accurately assesses the preferences of potential nominees. We argue that these perceptions are subject to systematic errors. Specifically, the amount of information available to the evaluator (the president and his staff) of a Supreme Court nominee's policy …
Status characteristics and their intersectionality: Majority opinion assignment in state supreme courts
We test whether justices’ traits – race, gender, age, previous judicial experience, education, and tenure – are associated with opinion assignment patterns as suggested by status characteristics theory. Female justices were more likely to be asked to write the majority opinion, particularly if the case raised a “women’s issue.” In complex cases, however, both female and African American justices were less likely to be selected to write the majori…
Diversity, consensus, and decision making: Evidence from the U.S. Courts of Appeals
In this article, we identify key theoretical perspectives from the literature in social and organizational psychology on diversity and workgroups and apply these concepts to an analysis of decision making in the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Using data from twelve circuits over two decades, we leverage the diversification of the federal appellate bench to investigate the nature of the relationship between changes to a court’s gender and racial composit…
Explaining Dissent on the Supreme Court of Canada
While there is an extensive literature on the causes of dissensus on appellate courts in the US, few empirical studies exist of the causes of dissent in Canadian Supreme Court. The current study seeks to close that gap in the literature, proposing and then testing what we call a Canadian model of dissent. We find that the likelihood of dissent is strongly related to four broad factors that appear to exert independent influence on whether the Cour…
Political tax cycles in the US states: Opportunism versus ideological sincerity in governors' revenue proposals
Do politicians behave opportunistically regarding their tax proposals during the election cycle, or do they maintain ideological sincerity? We examine U.S. governors' revenue proposals between the years of 1989 and 2018 to assess gubernatorial behavior during election years. We find that governors, in general, do indeed follow a political budget cycle where they request lower revenues during election years. However, this finding is largely driven…
The Effects of Information on the Accuracy of Presidential Assessments of Supreme Court Nominee Preferences
The Effects of Information on the Accuracy of Presidential Assessments of Supreme Court Nominee Preferences
Models of presidential success in the judicial appointment process assume that a president selects a nominee who will maximize his influence on the Court. The models assume that the president accurately assesses the preferences of potential nominees. We argue that these perceptions are subject to systematic errors. Specifically, the amount of information available to the evaluator (the president and his staff) of a Supreme Court nominee's policy …
DoestheLawyer Matter? Influencing Outcomes on the Supreme Court of Canada
This article examines the impact of lawyer capability on the decisionmaking of the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC). Extending prior attorney capability studies of U.S. judicial decisionmaking, we test three lawyer variables: prior litigation experience, litigation team size, and Queen's Counsel designation. We find that the first two variables have a statistically significant and positive relationship with the SCC's decisions in non-reference-quest…
Have We Come a Long Way, Baby? The Influence of Attorney Gender on Supreme Court Decision Making
While the impact of an attorney's sex has been examined with respect to trial court processes (e.g., jury decision making), no one has previously studied its effects on appellate court decision making. In this article, we argue that the application of gender schemas by some justices results in a devaluing of the arguments made by women litigators. Our findings suggest that women orally arguing attorneys are less likely to receive a favorable vote…
Explaining Dissent on the Supreme Court of Canada
While there is an extensive literature on the causes of dissensus on appellate courts in the US, few empirical studies exist of the causes of dissent in Canadian Supreme Court. The current study seeks to close that gap in the literature, proposing and then testing what we call a Canadian model of dissent. We find that the likelihood of dissent is strongly related to four broad factors that appear to exert independent influence on whether the Cour…
Women Lawyers before the Supreme Court of Canada
Recent work by Szmer, Sarver, and Kaheny (2010) exploring US Supreme Court decision making has suggested that lawyer gender might play a role in influencing judicial voting behaviour. Specifically, while women lawyers were not revealed to have a more difficult time winning cases before the US Supreme Court, the study did suggest they face a tougher challenge in gaining support from the more conservative justices on that bench. Here, we test wheth…
Race and Gender Bias in Three Administrative Contexts: Impact on Work Assignments in State Supreme Courts
Do certain types of administrative processes better inhibit race and gender prejudices that may surface in the public workplace? We compare the effects of three distinct administrative settings on race, gender, and other biases in the workload assignments of state supreme court justices—important public policy making settings that have been understudied in public administration. In particular, we model the extent to which majority opinion–writing…
The Impact of Attorney Gender on Decision Making in the United States Courts of Appeals
Despite a growing recognition of the influence of gender in the policymaking arena, few scholars have studied the relationship between lawyer gender and decision making on appellate courts. This article examines this relationship in the context of the United States Courts of Appeals, where there have been a greater number of female judges for a longer period of time. The results of the analysis suggest that, in the average Courts of Appeals case,…
Gender, Race, and Dissensus on State Supreme Courts
Objectives The objectives of this study were to integrate multiple streams of research on judicial dissensus to better understand the causes of state court of last resort justices’ decisions to dissent. The study particularly focused on the relationship between dissent and gender and race (and their intersection) at the individual and panel level. Methods We employed probit regression with clustered standard errors of the population of state cour…
Party Capability and the US Courts of Appeals: Understanding Why the “Haves” Win
While many studies have examined party capability theory, few have empirically examined the potential causal mechanisms underlying the theory. We do this by combining quantitative analyses with qualitative data drawn from interviews with over 60 US courts of appeals judges. We find that the “haves,” or repeat players, hire better lawyers and that these lawyers independently contribute to the success of the repeat players. We also find that the ad…
Race and Gender Bias in Three Administrative Contexts: Impact on Work Assignments in State Supreme Courts
Status characteristics and their intersectionality: Majority opinion assignment in state supreme courts
We test whether justices’ traits – race, gender, age, previous judicial experience, education, and tenure – are associated with opinion assignment patterns as suggested by status characteristics theory. Female justices were more likely to be asked to write the majority opinion, particularly if the case raised a “women’s issue.” In complex cases, however, both female and African American justices were less likely to be selected to write the majori…
Diversity, consensus, and decision making: Evidence from the U.S. Courts of Appeals
In this article, we identify key theoretical perspectives from the literature in social and organizational psychology on diversity and workgroups and apply these concepts to an analysis of decision making in the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Using data from twelve circuits over two decades, we leverage the diversification of the federal appellate bench to investigate the nature of the relationship between changes to a court’s gender and racial composit…
“I haven't come a long way, and I'm not a baby”: Task assignment and diversity of the Supreme Court bar
Objective Gender disparities in litigation task assignment are not limited to the trial court context; they are present in even the highest of courts in the United States. We explore and seek to explain the gendered patterns of participation by lawyers arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court. Methods After quantitatively describing participation by female attorneys in Supreme Court litigation, we use logistic regression and fractional logit, respec…
All eyes are on you: Gender, race, and opinion writing on the US Courts of Appeals
Because stereotyping affects individual assessments of ability and because of socializing experiences in the law, we argue that women and judges of color, while well-credentialed, feel pressure to work harder than their white male peers to demonstrate their competence. Using an original dataset of published appellate court opinions from 2008-2016, we find that majority opinions authored by female and non-white judges go farther to explain and jus…
Who Shapes the Law? Gender and Racial Bias in Judicial Citations
In this letter, we assess whether the contributions of judges from underrepresented groups are undervalued or overlooked, thereby reducing these judges' influence on legal policy. Drawing on an original dataset of discretionary citations to over 2,000 published federal appellate decisions, we find that the majority of opinions written by female judges receive less attention from other courts than those by similarly situated men and that this is l…
When the Courtiers Return to the Marble Palace: The Impact of U.S. Supreme Court Lawyers’ Prior Appellate Clerkship Experiences
Most Supreme Court (SCOTUS) clerk studies explore selection, or impact, during the clerkship. The existing research examining the benefits of clerking for those returning to the Court suggests relational expertise from clerking for a specific justice, not process expertise from the clerkship, enhances SCOTUS oral argument success. Our study suggests the benefits of prior appellate clerkships likely stem from both relational and process expertise.…
A Fresh Perspective: Legal Team Gender Composition and Brief Quality at the Supreme Court
Public debates rage over the importance of diversity. In attempts to inform such discourse, political scientists generally focus on individual-level characteristics. This approach ignores that small groups lie at the heart of governmental and societal work. Drawing from research on business and management stressing group composition is consequential for outcomes, we explore how the presence of higher proportions of female attorneys in explicit ro…
Political tax cycles in the US states: Opportunism versus ideological sincerity in governors' revenue proposals
Do politicians behave opportunistically regarding their tax proposals during the election cycle, or do they maintain ideological sincerity? We examine U.S. governors' revenue proposals between the years of 1989 and 2018 to assess gubernatorial behavior during election years. We find that governors, in general, do indeed follow a political budget cycle where they request lower revenues during election years. However, this finding is largely driven…
Political science (19 works) · Law (17 works) · Law (16 works) · Judicial and Constitutional Studies (15 works) · Supreme court (13 works) · Politics (9 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Legal Education and Practice Innovations (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Gender Politics and Representation (7 works)