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The salience of judicial institutions in democratic and nondemocratic countries has increased, making it important to have women on these powerful and visible decision-making bodies. Yet, women have only recently gained entrance to peak judicial bodies including constitutional and supreme courts. The appointment of the first woman to a high court is a historic landmark, breaking traditional ideas of who can and should be on the court. Using a global, longitudinal data set we show that certain explanatory factors matter differently in wealthy, stable democracies and in developing countries. The method of selecting high court justices exerts influence in wealthy, stable democracies but not newer ones. Further, our findings suggest that in both sets of countries, appointments to high courts are not made in a domestic vacuum and are influenced by international norms of having women participate in governing institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses an analysis on the media coverage contrast between male and female appointees in the high court justices of five democracies which include Argentina, Canada, and the U.S. Topics include the data and approach used as basis of comparison between the two genders, and the focus on the personal lives of female nominees such as U.S.'s Sandra Day O'Connor, Canada's Bertha Wilson, and Australia's Mary Gaudron as well as South Africa's Yvonne Mokgoro and Argentina's Carmen Argibay.

In this study the author examines the extent to which the Supreme Court acts as an opinion leader through its ability to induce attitude change. The author employs an experimental design with liberal and conservative rulings on one economic and one civil liberties issue, comparing the influence of the Supreme Court, Congress, and a nonpartisan think tank as sources of policies. The design was chosen in an attempt to eliminate outside sources of influence and to determine better the Supreme Court's ability to cause change in opinion. The results demonstrate that under some circumstances the Court can indeed influence opinion in the direction of its rulings, especially for those who regard the Court positively. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]