In Reimagining the Judiciary, Maria C. Escobar-Lemmon, Valerie J. Hoekstra, Alice J. Kang, and Miki Caul Kittilson address the diversification (or lack thereof) of peak courts globally. Combining their new global data set on women judges from 1970 to 2013 with five case studies (Canada, Colombia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States), the authors ask when, where, and why (1) have women been selected to peak courts for the first time and (2) have courts made progress toward or reached gender parity? They focus on three sets of explanations: the gender diversity of “pipelines” of qualified candidates from which peak court justices are selected, domestic institutions, and international influences. The first of the book is a cross-national study that assess the role of pipelines, domestic institutions, and international pressures on the selection of the first woman justice to a country’s peak court (Chapter 2) and the number of women on peak courts over time (Chapter 3). The second half of the book (Chapters 4–6) addresses the three sets of explanatory factors in more detail in the context of the five case studies.

What factors are associated with an earlier selection of the first woman to a peak court? Based on the comparative data set, the authors find that increases in (1) tertiary education of women relative to men, (2) the presence of women’s international nongovernmental organizations (WINGOs), and (3) gender-diversified courts in neighboring countries are all associated with the earlier selection of the first woman peak court justice. Once a woman has broken a peak court’s glass ceiling, the authors find two statistically significant factors associated with having a greater number of women on the court: (1) the size of the court and (2) regional peer effects. Courts with more seatsFootnote ¹ are associated with having more women justices (measured as a count, not a percentage), and countries nestled in a region with a greater percentage of women justices on peak courts are likewise more likely to have a greater number of women justices.

In the case studies that follow the global study, the authors address their three sets of explanatory factors for the gender diversification of courts one by one. There are two key conclusions: first, the case studies highlight the importance of context and describe how some factors might be relevant in some cases (such as international pressure in Canada) but not others (international pressure in the United States, for example). Second, the case studies emphasize that “agency is critical to women’s advancement in the judiciary” (155). For each of the five case-study countries, the role of individuals who choose to promote the inclusion of women on the court was instrumental to diversification, a finding that, by its nature, cannot easily be replicated in cross-national quantitative studies.

The book is an important contribution to the literature on gender and the judiciary. The authors persuasively and succinctly describe the importance of gender diversity in the judiciary, summarize existing research, outline three sets of explanatory factors, and test those factors cross-nationally and in case studies. The cross-national data set on its own is a substantial improvement to the field, and the case studies add depth to the comparative chapters’ breadth and highlight the importance of key actors in advocating for the diversification of the courts. In a subfield that has dedicated substantial effort to understanding institutional and structural explanations for diversity (or lack thereof), the conclusion that “women can advance anywhere that the choice is made to select women for seats on the bench” (155) is an important lesson. Overall, the authors clearly outline general trends and summarize stand-out examples (both countries/courts that were quick to diversify and those that have still not diversified), and the authors accomplish all of this in a clear, accessible writing style.

One consequence of the impressive breadth of this study is the need to focus on the explanatory factors in relative isolation. Both in the comparative chapters and the case studies, the main focus is a detailed analysis of each set of factors individually rather than on the connections between the explanatory factors. Hopefully future work will build on their ambitious data collection efforts and careful historical analysis to further assess the ways in which different explanatory factors interact to explain the gender diversification of courts.