October 14, 2004: Towards A More Diverse Judiciary

The Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) has published a consultation paper titled Increasing Diversity in the Judiciary. It focuses on judges and tribunal members (but not Justices of the Peace) in England and Wales.

The paper examines what it frankly acknowledges is the current lack of diversity in the judiciary, focusing on the issues of gender, ethnic origin and disability. Currently, only 15.8 per cent of judges are women, and just 3.4 per cent come from ethnic minority backgrounds. The paper notes that women tend to leave the profession in higher proportions than men before they might be expected to apply for judicial appointment. This reduces the diversity of the pool from which judges will be appointed in future.

According to the DCA consultation paper:

• less than 25 per cent of the judiciary overall are women
• less than 7 per cent are from minority ethnic groups
• in the courts (as opposed to tribunals), 15.8 per cent of judges are women, and less than 4 per cent are from the minority ethnic communities
• in the High Court and above, there are only 14 women (8 per cent) and only one from a minority ethnic background (by comparison, women comprise over 51 per cent of the population of England and Wales, and minority ethnic population nearly 8 per cent)
• it is not known how many judges have disabilities (numbers are believed to be small)

The questions posed by the consultation paper are:

• How should the system be changed to increase judicial diversity – what would be your top five priorities for change?
• If you are a lawyer who has not applied for judicial appointment, what has stopped you from doing so?

Significant changes are already planned for the appointments process in advance of the proposed new Judicial Appointments Commission. Those changes include the introduction of a single competence framework for all judicial posts below the High Court "which will cover the range of skills and behaviours expected of judicial office-holders.”

The Government has stated that it is committed to increasing judicial diversity as a priority. According to Constitutional Affairs Minister Lord Falconer:

“The diversity of the nation should increasingly be reflected in the diversity of its judges. We need to find out why people from diverse backgrounds and people with disabilities are not applying for judicial appointment in the numbers we might expect. This consultation paper will clearly be of great interest to judges and lawyers and legal academics … but I hope that people from a wide cross-section of society will feel able to offer me their comments and suggestions.”

Should you wish to respond to Lord Falconer’s invitation, responses are required by 21 January 2005. The full consultation paper is available online here.