Score One For Difference Feminism As A Study Of Immigration Courts Finds: “One of the most significant factors determining whether a judge would be likely to approve asylum petitions was sex, the study found. Female immigration judges grant asylum at a 44 percent higher rate than their male colleagues.”

The study, by law profs Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Philip Schrag and Andrew Schoenholtz is accessible here. Below is the abstract:

This study analyzes databases of merits decisions from all four levels of the asylum adjudication process: 133,000 decisions by 884 asylum officers over a seven year period; 140,000 decisions of 225 immigration judges over a four-and-a-half year period; 126,000 decisions of the Board of Immigration Appeals over six years; and 4215 decisions of the U.S. Courts of Appeal during 2004 and 2005. The analysis reveals significant disparities in grant rates, even when different adjudicators in the same office each considered large numbers of applications from nationals of the same country. In many cases, the most important moment in an asylum case is the instant in which a clerk randomly assigns an application to a particular asylum officer or immigration judge.

Using cross-tabulations based on public biographies, the paper also explores correlations between sociological characteristics of individual immigration judges and their grant rates. The cross tabulations show that the chance of winning asylum was strongly affected by whether or not the applicant had legal representation, by the gender of the immigration judge, and by the immigration judge’s work experience prior to appointment.

In their conclusion, the authors do not recommend enforced quota systems for asylum adjudicators, but they do make recommendations for more comprehensive training, more effective and independent appellate review, and other reforms that would further professionalize the adjudication system.

A NYT account of the study is accessible here.