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Glenn Reynolds cited to a recent speech by Bill Gates which we gender-genied as follows [Note added anno 2020: Gender Genie is no longer online, see Gender Guesser at Hacker Factor]:

Words: 5015 Female Score: 5332 Male Score: 7438 – 58%

– there is that same balanced blend found among the inaugural addresses of the US Presidents.

You just have to be easy-going, relaxed and a nice guy to be popular.

How would U.S. Supreme Court Decisions fare under the Gender Genie?

Are judicial decisions male or female? Let us look at the recent Grutter case as an example.

The US Supreme Court decision in Grutter v. Bollinger

Grutter v. Bollinger No. 02-241. Argued April 1, 2003–Decided June 23, 2003

The final paper which I assigned to my students in last year’s FFA law and legal research class at the University of Trier Law School was to decide the Grutter case – i.e. before the case was actually decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in June, 2003. The student papers were due in February, 2003. The result of this assignment was for me at that time surprisingly balanced, as the ca. 200 students were split in their decisions right down the middle. Even the arguments raised in the later actual opinions of the Justices were all well anticipated in advance in the student papers – there were thus no surprises.

Mild surprises do appear however when the Justices’ opinions in Grutter are gender-genied, as follows:

Justice O’Connor wrote the majority opinion (the case was decided 5-4) gives this gender-genied result:

Words: 9096 Female Score: 6847 Male Score: 11657 – 63% male

Justice Ginsburg, with whom Justice Breyer joins, concurring, gender-genies as:

Words: 687 Female Score: 312 Male Score: 581 – 65% male

Chief Justice Rehnquist, with whom Justice Scalia, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Thomas join, dissenting, (tables omitted), results in:

Words: 2295 Female Score: 1668 Male Score: 3072 – 65% male

Justice Kennedy, dissenting, is similar in word distribution to most of the other justices

Words: 2448 Female Score: 2231 Male Score: 3460 – 61% male

Justice Scalia, with whom Justice Thomas joins, concurring in part and dissenting in part, surprises us

Words: 790 Female Score: 641 Male Score: 811 – 56% male

and

Justice Thomas, with whom Justice Scalia joins as to Parts I-VII, concurring in part and dissenting in part.

(long Frederick Douglass quote removed), has written the opinion with the most “male” words.

Words: 7701 Female Score: 5076 Male Score: 10238 – 67% male.

Conclusion?

Certainly a spread of 56 % to 67% in male opinion-wording among all these Justices gives no conclusive result. The fact is, they are all pretty similar from this point of view. Or – asked differently – is it normal that they are similar?

In other words, Gender Genie still needs a lot of work before it is “market ready”. The basic idea of this kind of “text test” is of course most certainly correct, i.e. that maleness and femaleness is manifested in our choice of words.

However, this choice of words is greatly affected by the subject matter in question and the purpose of our writing. We can presume that more forceful writing will be more male (i.e. more aggressive) and more conciliatory writing will be more female (i.e. less aggressive), even if the two writings are made by the same person, whether male OR female.

Words have to be weighed.