The Influence Of Judge Gender On Divorce Trial

With the progress of the rule of law,the development of women’s rights and interests,and the increasing access to education for women,the proportion of female judges in the judicial system is growing year by year.Therefore,the theoretical research and empirical research on whether female judges would make different judicial decisions from male judges has thus become increasingly abundant.Before answering the question of whether the gender factor of a judge affects judicial adjudication,it is essential to first explore the theoretical paradigm of legal philosophy regarding the influence of a judge’s personality factors on their adjudication.Legal formalists believe that the personality factor of judges does not affect judge adjudication,as they believe judges make decisions rely on certain legal reasoning which is legal and scientific enough.On the contrary,legal realists hold a different opinion that judges rely on intuition,which influenced by factors such as personality,to make different decisions.And from a biological and feminist perspective,evidence suggests that the difference in biological and social gender indeed leads to different personalities.It is already revealed by existing empirical studies that the gender of judges has divergent influence in various regions,cases,and data analysis models.In cases without gender involvement,gender of the judge has no significant influence on the judgment.However,in cases involving both sexes,like sexual harassment or gender discrimination,the gender of the judge may have an impact on judicial decisions.After theoretical exploration,this study turns to empirical research,in which the data were analyzed by a nine-time Multinomial Logistics Regression model through SPSS.Overall,in this data study,the gender of judges in the A City of Zhejiang Province did not have statistically significant effects on the way cases were concluded,the distribution of custody rights,or the tendency of property division in divorce cases from 2021 to the first half of 2022.Finally,the causes of the empirical research findings are explained in this study from two aspects: the practice expression of legal formalism and the normative limits of judicial discretion in China.