Shortlisted is a timely and provocative examination of the biographies of women formally shortlisted for vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court. The product of more than a decade of research involving analysis of media depictions of Supreme Court candidates, review of the candidates' personal papers, biographies, and autobiographies, and evaluation of materials in presidential archives, the book focuses on the largely untold stories of the exceptionally qualified women who were shortlisted for Supreme Court vacancies. In telling their stories, Renee Knake Jefferson and Hannah Brenner Johnson expose the gendered nature of the Supreme Court selection process and illustrate the ways in which shortlists have been used by presidents to create the appearance of diversity while maintaining the patriarchal status quo.

The first part of the book is a fascinating examination of the “herstories” of the “shortlisted sisters,” including nine women who were shortlisted prior to the selection of Sandra Day O'Connor as the first female Supreme Court Justice and the women who appeared on presidential shortlists after O'Connor's confirmation. Jefferson and Johnson begin by telling the story of Frances Allen, the first woman to sit on a state court of last resort and the first to be appointed to an Article III federal court. A “woman before her time” (16), Allen was also the first woman whose name appeared repeatedly on presidential shortlists for Supreme Court vacancies. The authors uncovered evidence that Allen was considered a potential nominee for the high court by Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt (who, despite strong support for nominating Allen by his wife, Eleanor, filled all eight vacancies during his time in office with men), and Harry Truman (who filled four vacancies, all with men).

All of the Supreme Court vacancies that occurred between 1937, when Frances Allen appeared on Roosevelt's shortlist and 1981, when Sandra Day O'Connor was nominated by President Reagan were filled with men, but several women were shortlisted by Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Reagan (President Carter did not have an opportunity to fill a Supreme Court vacancy during his time in office). Jefferson and Johnson delve deep into the backgrounds of these extraordinary women, pointing out that they were as qualified—if not more qualified—than the men who eventually were chosen. The authors also describe each president's shortlisting process, noting that their public pronouncements in favor of nominating women to the nation's highest court were at odds with their private musings and their actual nominations and pointing out that despite the fact that each of them faced intense pressure to appoint a women from professional organizations, law school deans, and their own wives and daughters, all of their nominees were men.

The last two chapters of the first part of Shortlisted focus on the nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor, who was shortlisted by Reagan along with four other women when a vacancy occurred in 1981, and the women who made it off the shortlist—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Harriet Miers (who withdrew her name from consideration when questions were raised about her qualifications), Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan—in the decades that followed. Jefferson and Johnson document the ways in which media depictions of these nominees focused not on their credentials and experience but on their gender, marital status, family situations, and personal lives. Articles published in the New York Times and the Washington Post commented on Ginsburg's relationship with her husband and “their seemingly unconventional. .. marriage” (116), on Miers' and Sotomayor's lack of a personal life, and on the fact that both Sotomayor and Kagan were overweight and childless. Needless to say, the male nominees during this time period were not subjected to these types of gendered critiques.

Although the authors acknowledge that the fact that every president since Reagan shortlisted at least one woman for the Supreme Court “represents progress to celebrate,” they also contend that these shortlists “have become political tools” (113). As they put it, “shortlists function as nothing more than hollow nods toward equality while legitimating prejudice and bias as more white men are selected” (113–114). They elaborate on this in part two of their book, which uses the life histories of the shortlisted (and selected) women to illuminate the persistent gender inequalities that confront women who are candidates for positions of leadership and power. They argue that women who attain these positions often are viewed as tokens and that tokenism preserves the patriarchal status quo by propagating the false assumption that the selection of a token women (or person of color) means that equality has been achieved. They also explore the ways in which tokenism imposes unreasonable burdens on women seen as tokens, leads to inappropriate scrutiny of their relationships and personal lives and pressure to conform to unrealistic and gendered norms of appropriate behavior, and allows for the proliferation of sexual harassment. Their pessimistic conclusion is that tokenism has not eradicated sexual discrimination, bias, and prejudice; rather, “the presence of tokens, even if well intentioned, has led to a professional world that functions very similarly to that of the 1970s in leadership ranks.” (141), Also fascinating is the authors' examination of the double binds—the artificial dichotomies—that confronted the shortlisted sisters, including the classic double binds of femininity/competence and motherhood/career and their discussion of whether the appointment of more women—or more diverse women—to the federal bench would affect case outcomes and the administration of justice.

Jefferson and Johnson end their book by offering a list of eight strategies designed to “surmount the shortlist” and ensure that more women are shortlisted and selected—for example, leveraging legal education, collaborating with other women to make all women, collectively, more competitive, and creating and actively pursuing opportunities for leadership and power. The authors acknowledge that implementation of these strategies, most of which reflect common-sense approaches to confronting the male-dominated status quo, will not eradicate gender discrimination in the judicial system. Rather, they present them as “ideas for moving forward drawn from the collected experiences of our shortlisted sisters.” (192).

Shortlisted is a well written, logically organized, and thoroughly researched exploration of the “Women in the Shadows of the Supreme Court.” Jefferson and Johnson tell the heretofore untold stories of the women who were shortlisted—and only a few of whom were selected—for vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court. In doing so, they convincingly demonstrate how gendered typescripts and norms of sex-appropriate behavior shaped the Supreme Court selection process and ensured the preservation of the status quo, This timely book, which was published after President Trump's nomination of Brent Kavanaugh but before his nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, makes a significant contribution to the sociolegal literature on the judicial selection process and to our understanding of why “despite multiple waves of feminism, misogyny remains pervasive in the twenty-first century.” (209).