Amy Coney Barrett is Not Enough: How Descriptive and Substantive Representation Shape Trust and Legitimacy of the Federal Courts

Abstract

Public trust and perceptions of institutional legitimacy are vital to the functioning of the federal court system, and recent work challenges the long-standing belief that these attitudes are relatively stable in the populace. We posit that one threat to perceptions of trust and legitimacy is the lack of representation for women in the federal judiciary. Using a series of experiments, we show that, while women desire descriptive representation, this is an insufficient condition for preserving support for the institution. Substantive representation on issues critical to women leads to significantly increased trust and legitimacy and lowered perceptions of institutional bias among women. While female judges may bring their own social identities to bear in their decision-making, our work suggests that efforts to diversify the federal judiciary, while important, are unlikely to bolster public support for the courts if the new judges and justices fail to substantively represent the communities of interest.