According to The Guardian not enough women or ethnic minorities are being appointed as High Court judges.
But a Guardian review of selection shows that those appointed since last September are remarkably similar to those selected under the old process. All 10 are white male former barristers and six of the nine educated in Britain went to leading independent schools belonging to the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference.
They tell us that people have to apply now….but the one thing they don’t tell us is the gender and racial make up of the applicant pool. Only by looking at the success rate of such from applying to appointment can anything interesting be said about whether there is discrimination in the appointment process.
Unfortunately, the numbers are not given on the JAC website.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Kay Tie // Jan 28, 2008 at 11:10 am
But that’s no excuse - they should scour the country looking for black and female barristers and make them judges. Who can then sit and rule on cases whether it is lawful to reject someone because of their skin colour or sex.
2 Deirdre // Jan 28, 2008 at 4:22 pm
The original quest for equal oppotunity has nowadays morphed into a desire for equal representation of the population at large. The logical consequence of this is that you ignore the qualifications and just set sex, ethnic and disability quotas. In the courts, this implies that soon they will be setting quotas for ex- or possibly current criminals to sit on the bench.
3 john cramer // Jan 28, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Should it not mean that when a sex/ethnic group has achieved its education’/qualification quota - then no more should be let into their education group from that sector.
And they don’t even mention left handed violinists.
4 Paul // Jan 28, 2008 at 11:20 pm
I did jury service a couple of years ago.
The male judges were pussy cats conducting their cases. Oh it was all so soft and cuddly.
The one female judge was “sweetness and light”and all things reasonable until the guilty verdict was announced. I remember my shock when she told the woman very, very firmly to “STAND UP!”. She then demolished the woman in three minutes of sheer verbal power.
Awesome. And I swear that the guilty party will not been keen to relive the experience.
Female judges. Bring ‘em on! The Guardian may get more than it is bargaining for.
5 Mark Wadsworth // Jan 29, 2008 at 1:35 pm
What bothers me is that by-and-large, the UK legal system is a totally morally corrupt inefficient artifically expensive self-serving closed shop manned and womanned by vain egotists who know f*** all about anything (neither common sense nor the law). Whether having more BME or women in there would improve matters I do not know.
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