It turns out not even U.S. Supreme Court justices are safe from the “manterruption” pandemic.
Interruptions are often regarded as an assertion of power through verbal dominance. If that’s the case, then women in positions of power should be interrupted less. Yet a new study from Northwestern University found that at the pinnacle of the legal profession, female Supreme Court justices are just like other women, “talked over by their male colleagues.”
The study’s authors explained their findings in a post for SCOTUSblog:
“In the last 12 years, when women made up on average 24% of the bench, 32% of interruptions were of the female justices, yet only 4% of interruptions were by the female justices. That means each woman was interrupted on average three times more often than each of her male colleagues.”
“In the last 12 years, when women made up on average 24% of the bench, 32% of interruptions were of the female justices, yet only 4% of interruptions were by the female justices. That means each woman was interrupted on average three times more often than each of her male colleagues.”
The disparity matters a great deal because oral arguments factor significantly into case outcomes. “When a justice is interrupted, her point is left unaddressed, and her ability to influence the outcome of a case or the framing of another justice’s reasoning is undermined,” the study says.
The authors also uncovered fascinating speech patterns and strategies that professional women might learn from: Their study found that as female justices gained experience, they cut back on posing questions with prefatory words and phrases like “sorry,” and “may I ask”—the kind of language that gives other justices an opportunity to jump in. Essentially, female justices learned to talk more like men and they were interrupted less often.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the study says, “appears to transition to a more aggressive style of questioning in the 2015 Term, and she is not interrupted nearly as frequently.”
Despite that finding, women justices should not be expected to fix the “manterruption” problem on their own. Chief Justice John Roberts, the study says, could play a larger role as a referee. Or male justices could simply learn to let their female colleagues speak.