The way to make the judiciary more diverse is to increase the number of women and black and minority ethnic (BAME) law firm partners, Lord Burnett, the Lord Chief Justice, has said.
And while sex and ethnicity are visible characteristics, the socio-economic background of candidates is often less obvious. Delivering the Treasurer’s Lecture 2019 this week at Middle Temple, Lord Burnett said: ‘It is of great concern that the legal profession appears to be over populated, particularly at the upper reaches, with people from economically privileged backgrounds. Social diversity matters too.’
He recalled that, as recently as 1991, there was a policy in the Lord Chancellor’s department of not appointing ‘openly gay judges’.
However, judges are drawn from the ranks of successful practitioners, he said, therefore diversity in the judiciary is dependent on diversity in the profession. Currently, only about a third of partners in law firms are female, and they are disproportionately situated at smaller firms. About a third of senior junior barristers of more than 15 years’ call are female, but only 15% of QCs are female.
In 2018, there were no ethnic minority judges in the Supreme Court, one judge (out of 39) in the Court of Appeal, and only three in the High Court. There were three women in the Supreme Court, nine in the Court of Appeal and 24 in the High Court.
Lord Burnett said: ‘Promoting diversity and appointing on the basis of merit are mutually reinforcing because the wider the pool the greater the availability of talent, the greater the competition for places and the greater the quality of appointments.’
