Gender Differences in Judicial Reasoning in Administrative and Public Law: A Systematic Literature Review

For more than four decades, scholars in public, constitutional, and administrative law, alongside feminist jurisprudence, have debated whether a judge’s gender influences judicial reasoning. Early empirical studies reached mixed conclusions: some found no systematic gender effect on case outcomes (Songer and Crews-Meyer 2000; Steffensmeier and Herbert 2001), whereas others identified gender-linked divergences in specific contexts such as sexual assault, discrimination, and cases involving vulnerable groups (Spohn and Holleran 1991; Peresie 2004). Beyond outcomes, researchers have documented subtler differences in how judges frame decisions, their rhetorical language, and their sensitivity to particular social harms (Elvin and Vandevelde 2010; Brown 2023). These questions carry particular weight in public law, where judicial and administrative decisions structure rights, burdens, and state–citizen relationships. This review synthesizes 36 peer-reviewed studies (1979–2025) identified through a PRISMA-guided search, integrating quantitative, qualitative, theoretical, and computational research. The review’s objectives are to (1) categorize empirical findings on gender differences in judicial reasoning; (2) map the interpretive, discursive, and institutional dimensions through which gender may exert influence; and (3) evaluate opportunities for computational methods—with digital twins for legislation (Schnitzhofer 2024)—to mitigate bias and strengthen gender fairness in public law