STRENGTHENING OUR COURTS: Creating a More Representative System
A diverse bench is vital to achieving a fair system of justice and increasing public trust and confidence in the courts, particularly among historically underrepresented communities. Across the country, state supreme courts fail to reflect an increasingly diverse population.
In May, 2020, the Brennan Center for Justice published its update on “State Supreme Court Diversity” which detailed vast racial, ethnic and gender disparities on state high courts across the country, drawing on more than 60 years of data.
According to this update, state supreme courts fail to reflect an increasingly diverse population. Nationally, the percentage of justices of color has slightly increased to 18% from 17% in April, 2021 and the percentage of female justices nationwide has also slightly increased. This year, 40% of new justices are people of color, an increase from last year, when just over one-quarter of new justices were people of color.
But in twenty states, no supreme court justices publicly identify as a person of color, including 12 states where people of color make up at least 20% of the population. Fifteen states have never had a Black supreme court justice.
Our Wisconsin Supreme Court has female diversity (six of the seven justices are women). However, Wisconsin does not fare well in terms of diversity throughout the state court system. According to a study from 2016, researchers found that Wisconsin’s judicial system was 59% less diverse than its population. Wisconsin ranked forty-fourth out of fifty, making it one of the 26 states to receive an F rating. As of 2016, Wisconsin had 264 judges with only 5% judges of color--lagging behind other Midwestern states including Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio,, Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa. Finally, in 2019, Governor Evers appointed Judge Joseph Donald to the state Court of Appeals, only the second African American to serve at that level. Along with other judges, Donald has called for recognizing “the ongoing injustices in our legal system and the barriers that stand in the way of justice.” The barriers, he describes, are “ignorance, denial and silence.”
Several factors have contributed to our current lack of judicial diversity. Some includ a long history of racial and gender discrimination in the United States as well as inequities in access to law schools and the legal bar. Judicial selection may be a process to create more diverse courts, according to the Brennan Center, as judicial elections have rarely been a path for people of color to reach state supreme courts. The Center also found that racial disparities in every element of state supreme court elections, from who wins, to how frequently incumbent justices are challenged, to how much money candidates raise, to who is supported by special interest groups. The Brennan Center encourages measures to promote diversity on the bench, such as judicial public financing for opening the door to otherwise qualified candidates who lack access to networks of wealthy donors. Further, judicial nominating commissions would be a step in the right direction to strengthen the applicant pool for judgeships and ensure equitable consideration of judicial candidates.
Learn more at brennancenter.org
Blog post by Joan Schwarz, LWV Dane Co.
