Jorgen Harris, Occidental

Diverse Hiring in Homogeneous Hiring Pools

Abstract: We study the effect of hearing cases alongside nonwhite judicial colleagues on the probability that a federal judge hires a nonwhite law clerk. Federal judges are assigned to judicial panels at random and have few limitations on their choices of law clerks. Using a unique dataset of federal case records merged with judicial hiring information, we find that white judges are less likely to hire Black, Hispanic, or Asian clerks in years when they are randomly assigned to cases with Black, Hispanic, and Asian judges (respectively) at a higher rate. This finding presents a surprising contrast to prior work in Battaglini, Harris, Patacchini (2023) which found strong positive effects on interaction with female colleagues on hiring of women. We hypothesize that this negative effect results from reductions in judges’ proactive attempts to recruit non-white clerks, due to changes in their perceptions of the diversity of the profession.