Nichola D. Gutgold, associate professor of communication arts and sciences at Penn State Lehigh Valley, recently published “The Rhetoric of Supreme Court Women: From Obstacles to Options,” by Lexington Books – a division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.

For almost 200 years, the U.S. Supreme Court has been an exclusively male-dominated institution. From 1981 to 2010, however, four women were appointed to the Supreme Court for the first time in U.S. history: Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. In her book, Gutgold analyzes the rhetoric of these four women, while shedding light on the rise of political women in American judiciary. The power of their rhetoric in a historically male-dominated political system is carefully shown through Gutgold’s analysis of confirmation hearings, primary scripts of their written opinions, invited public lectures, speechesand personal interviews with Justices O’Connor, Ginsburg and Sotomayor.