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 roles on litigation teams at the U.S. Supreme Court impacts written advocacy in briefs and their role in judicial decision-making. We find higher rates of female participation increase the volume, readability, and strategic nature of the information contained in briefs. However, these advantages don’t result in significant advantages in the Supreme Court outcomes, raising issues of gender bias. Overall, our findings have implications for a wide range of governmental groups and types of advocacy in numerous political contexts.