The new Center for American Progress report examines the diversity of the federal judiciary. Federal courts today fail to reflect the diversity of the public they serve. Correcting this is more than just symbolic — it will produce richer jurisprudence, incorporating a wider and more representative range of experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives.
The U.S. federal judiciary holds incredible sway over life in America. From the U.S. District Courts and the U.S. Courts of Appeals all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, the individuals holding lifetime appointments to the bench determine the contours of America's laws and whose rights are protected under those laws. But professional diversity on the federal appellate courts is severely lacking, with significant implications for the type of legal expertise underlying the opinions these judges issue. Only about 1 percent of sitting circuit court judges have spent the majority of their careers as public defenders or within a legal aid setting. In contrast, the federal appellate bench is swamped with those who spent the majority of their careers in private practice or as federal prosecutors—making up more than 70 percent of all sitting appellate judges. No sitting judge spent the majority of their career with a nonprofit civil rights organization.
It is important to consider these statistics alongside the fact that the federal appellate bench remains overwhelmingly white and male and that these trends in career and educational backgrounds correspond with those professional pathways that white men have long been able to access without the discrimination women and people of color have faced. To underscore this point: Nearly 70 percent of all white men on the federal appellate bench spent their careers in private practice, but less than half of the only 12 women of color on the bench came from the same sector.
In order to better understand the individuals who hold such positions of power, previous reports from the Center for American Progress have analyzed the demographic diversity of the federal judiciary in great depth. Perhaps unsurprisingly, despite some progress, those reports found that individuals on the federal bench look significantly different from those whose rights they rule on—particularly in regard to women of color and LGTBQ individuals.
The report concludes with a discussion of reforms needed to ensure a professionally diverse bench, providing examples of how the legal profession, Congress, and future administrations could act to improve the bench. Importantly, the report notes that the lack of professional diversity is severe enough that all policymakers must take responsibility. "Policymakers can diversify the federal courts by confirming more lawyers from civil rights and public defender backgrounds to the bench as well as creating pipelines of young attorneys from a range of professions for future judgeships."
The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and the American Bar Association Judicial Division released Building a Diverse Bench: Selecting Federal Magistrate and Bankruptcy Judges, a similar resource in 2017 that offers practical steps the federal judiciary can take to promote a more diverse bench.