"Diverse" Supreme Court is an Illusion to Manufacture Belief in the Lex-icon. Blacks are Unwanted in White Courtrooms Unless They're Criminal Defendants: Only 5% of All Attorneys and Judges are Black
THE CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS FOUND THAT THE FEDERAL JUDICIARY IS 80% WHITE. AMONG THE HIGHEST STATE COURTS THE JUDICIARY IS 83% WHITE. IN FACT THERE ARE NO BLACK JUSTICES IN 28 STATES, THERE ARE NO LATINO JUSTICES IN 40 STATES, THERE ARE NO ASIAN AMERICAN JUSTICES IN 44 STATES AND THERE ARE NO NATIVE AMERICAN JUSTICES IN 47 STATES. [MORE] ANOTHER STUDY FOUND THAT THE STATE JUDICIARY AT ALL OTHER LOWER LEVELS IS ALSO 80% WHITE. [MORE] and [MORE]
FURTHERMORE, ACCORDING TO A RECENT STUDY AND THE ABA ONLY 5% OF ALL ATTORNEYS ARE BLACK. SAID NUMBER HAS REMAINED STEADY FROM 2009 - 2019. THE LEGAL PROFESSION IS NEARLY ALL WHITE: SPECIFICALLY, IT IS 85% WHITE, 5% BLACK, 5% LATINO, 2% ASIAN AMERICAN AND 1% NATIVE AMERICAN. [MORE] AND [MORE]
ONLY 3% of all prosecutors are black
AN EJI STUDY FOUND THAT BLACKS ARE GROSSLY UNDERREPRESENTED ON JURIES
From [HERE] The Supreme Court looks more like America than it ever has. The lawyers who argue at the nation's highest court? Not so much.
The current two-week session of arguments features 25 men and just two women, an imbalance so stark that the Biden administration's top Supreme Court lawyer made a point of it in her defense of race-conscious college admissions Monday.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued to the court that extreme racial or gender disparities between certain groups "can cause people to wonder whether the path to leadership is open."
Prelogar and Morgan Ratner, a lawyer in private practice, are the lone women who began arguments this week as attorneys customarily do, "Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court."
No woman will argue a case in the second week of the court session.
The glaring lack of women was a "common sense example," Prelogar said, that she hoped would resonate with the court, especially when women make up roughly half of law school graduates.
"And I think it would be reasonable for a woman to look at that and wonder, is that a path that's open to me, to be a Supreme Court advocate? Are private clients willing to hire women to argue their Supreme Court cases? When there is that kind of gross disparity in representation, it can matter and it's common sense," she said.
The month before wasn't much different. Eighteen men and four women, including Prelogar, argued eight cases.
The racial and ethnic disparity among lawyers also is stark, at a time when there are four women, two African-Americans and a Latina among the nine justices. Just one Black man has made a Supreme Court argument this term, and the last time a Black woman appeared before the justices was in 2019. [MORE]