Page 47 - Judicial Diversity Update report

previous report, we recommended that to enable access to this pool the
requirement of post-professional qualification experience in the law should be
removed for judicial appointments to the Court of Appeal and Supreme
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Court. We proposed that alternative qualification requirements be
introduced, stipulating, for example, that candidates must either be qualified to
practise or must have undertaken a PhD in law or equivalent. Including
academics as a possible source of candidates will increase the possibilities of
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a more diverse judiciary. We note that courts in other common law
jurisdictions, such as Australia and Canada, routinely appoint academics as
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senior judges.

Socio-economic background

2.69. Socio-economic background is not a protected characteristic; but an increasing
body of research highlights that it has a stronger effect on access and
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progression to many elite professions compared to gender and ethnic group.
Data collection

‘Procedure for Appointing a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom’, available at:
https://www.supremecourt.uk/about/appointments-of-justices.html.
108 JUSTICE, Increasing Judicial Diversity (2017), available online at https://justice.org.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2017/04/JUSTICE-Increasing-judicial-diversity-report-2017-web.pdf, p.39.
109 We acknowledge that women and other minorities are unrepresented at the senior end of academia
too. However, academics are a more diverse pool so there is the potential for more diverse
appointments.
110 Sir Geoffrey Bindman QC and Karon Monaghan QC, Judicial Diversity: Accelerating Change,
2014, available online at
https://www.judicialappointments.gov.uk/sites/default/files/sync/news/accelerating_change_finalrev_0
.pdf, p.64.
111 The Bridge Group, ‘Socio-economic Background and Early Career Progression in the Law’,
September 2018, available online at
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5c18e090b40b9d6b43b093d8/t/5cd180d73cfb160001436429/15
57233888333/03+Research+2018+Progression+law.pdf; Social Mobility and Child Poverty
Commission, ‘A qualitative evaluation of non-educational barriers to the elite professions’, June 2015,
available online at https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/23163/1/A_qualitative_evaluation_of_non-
educational_barriers_to_the_elite_professions.pdf; The BBC, ‘Reflecting the socio-economic diversity
of the UK within the BBC workforce: A report on Career Progression and Culture at the BBC’, 2018,
available online at http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/diversity/pdf/socio-economic-diversity.pdf
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