Judiciary

What is in scope

Justices of supreme and constitutional courts — courts of last instance in their jurisdictions. The dataset's coverage at present is principally the Supreme Court of the United States, with expansion to the United Kingdom Supreme Court, the German Federal Constitutional Court, and others on the roadmap.

Why this domain matters

Justices are selected by a small mechanism with high political stakes — typically presidential or sovereign nomination and legislative confirmation. The mechanism is fully visible: nomination, hearings, vote.

The Supreme Court of the United States provides the dataset's clearest longitudinal series in any domain. Six women have served on the Court: O'Connor (1981, Reagan, confirmed 99–0), Ginsburg (1993, Clinton, 96–3), Sotomayor (2009, Obama, 68–31), Kagan (2010, Obama, 63–37), Barrett (2020, Trump, 52–48), and Jackson (2022, Biden, 53–47). The pattern spans both major parties, and the rate accelerates inside the principal cluster window: two of the six confirmations occurred in the 2020–2022 period, against the prior baseline of approximately one per decade.

The vote margins themselves track a separate institutional trend — a steady decline in cross-party Senate consensus on judicial nominations over the same period — that complicates causal attribution but does not affect the underlying first-woman count.