Susan Haire, Ph.D.

cmshaire@uga.edu

University of Georgia

Country: United States (Georgia)

Website

About Me:

Susan Haire received her PhD in political science from the University of South Carolina. Her doctoral research on the U.S. Courts of Appeals was recognized as the best dissertation in public law by the American Political Science Association. Haire joined UGA’s Department of Political Science in 1995 where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses that focus on American courts, gender, and research methods. An affiliated faculty member with Women’s Studies, she also serves as Director of Criminal Justice Studies, an interdisciplinary undergraduate degree program at UGA.

Research Interests

Judicial Politics

Gender and Politics

Countries of Interest

United States

Publications:

Books Written:

(2015) Diversity Matters: Judicial Policymaking on the U.S. Courts of Appeals., University of Virginia Press

Until President Jimmy Carter launched an effort to diversify the lower federal courts, the U.S. courts of appeals had been composed almost entirely of white males. But by 2008, over a quarter of sitting judges were women and 15 percent were African American or Hispanic. Underlying the argument made by administration officials for a diverse federal judiciary has been the expectation that the presence of women and minorities will ensure that the policy of the courts will reflect the experiences of a diverse population. Yet until now, scholarly studies have offered only limited support for the expectation that judges’ race, ethnicity, or gender impacts their decision making on the bench. In Diversity Matters, Susan B. Haire and Laura P. Moyer employ innovative new methods of analysis to offer a fresh examination of the effects of diversity on the many facets of decision making in the federal appellate courts. Drawing on oral histories and data on appellate decisions through 2008, the authors’ analyses demonstrate that diversity on the bench affects not only individual judges’ choices but also the overall character and quality of judicial deliberation and decisions. Looking forward, the authors anticipate the ways in which these process effects will become more pronounced as a result of the highly diverse Obama appointment cohort.