Page 9 - Judicial Diversity Update report

I. INTRODUCTION

1.1. In April 2017, JUSTICE published Increasing Judicial Diversity. In that
report, a Working Party of our members warned that without active attention
to the diversity deficit in our senior judiciary, our courts would continue to be
dominated by white, privately educated men who had practised at the
independent Bar. We noted a looming crisis of judicial morale and of judicial
recruitment, suggesting that this might present an opportunity for quality
candidates from non-traditional backgrounds to join the bench in numbers that
might begin to rebalance the demographics of the judiciary.

1.2. At the time of our report, judicial diversity was big news. Lady Hale was the
only woman serving on the Supreme Court (and the only woman ever to have
done so); Lord Justice Hickinbottom was then the only sitting former solicitor
in the High Court or above; there had never been a Black, Asian or Minority
Ethnic (BAME) judge appointed to any court higher than the High Court and
there had only ever been one woman serve, many years earlier, as a Head of
Division in the courts of England and Wales.

1.3. Since then, all of these high-level indicators of diversity have improved; Lady
Black and Lady Arden now sit on the Supreme Court, the number of solicitors
ever to have sat in the High Court has doubled (to eight); Sir Rabinder Singh
became the first BAME Court of Appeal judge; and Dame Victoria Sharp is
now President of the Queen’s Bench Division. These developments are all
significant and are to be applauded.

1.4. However, the picture painted by these headlines belies the fact that over the
last two and a half years, most appointments to our senior courts have
continued much as before. While the chance of appointment appears to have
improved for white women at the Bar, the current small numbers of female
judges overall, combined with likely retirements or voluntary resignations in
the years to come, means that progress is fragile and, particularly at the senior
levels, the risk of regression is high. Furthermore, the data demonstrates that
progress with respect to ethnicity, disability, professional and social
background has barely begun.

1.5. This tenuous progress reflects the limited change of approach to judicial
diversity since 2017. Whilst we are pleased that some of the more minor

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