Transcripts For CSPAN2 Federal Judges Discussion At Center For American Progress 20240713

Strikes at the heart of our democratic values. If we truly believe that all americans deserve equal to men in the eyes of the law. Must ensure that our legal decisions made by judges who backgrounds and perspectives that represent the experiences of all americans. Study after study has shown that Diverse Groups solve problems in a more thoughtful and innovative way and arrived at more efficient and effective decisions. And solutions. So it comes as no surprise that diversity among our federal judges, in terms of their race and ethnic city in the gender and Sexual Orientation or gender identity, the really religious affiliation and the professional backgrounds, helps produce a stronger Justice System. Places greater power in the hands of people who better understand the struggles of communities that have suffered discrimination and his voices have been pushed to the margins of our society for is it too long. It is Crystal Clear that our current judicial system fails to capture the births of the american experience. In fact, a new cap report which i hope youll have copies of, released just this morning, by danielle ruth, jake, and grace, find that 80 percent ascending federal judges are white in the nearly 60 percent are white males. Right now, there is a disturbing lack the racial diversity on our federal benches and fewer than s identify as lgbt queue. Now its true, that some president s, in recent history took action to address these trends. Most notably president barack obama and his administration. But since injuring the white house President Donald Trump has worked tirelessly to undermine and overturn such efforts. The Trump Administration enabled Mitch Mcconnell and some republicans had managed to confirm 152 of trump his judicial nominees who are overwhelmingly white and male. In fact 73 percent of trump his appointees, have been there more than 80 percent having white. Progressives want to fully advance the causes, we care so deeply about, for protecting the rights of immigrants and people of disabilities to expanding affordable healthcare and reforming our criminal Justice System, that we must improve the diversity of our federal courts. Thats why kent is so proud to host todays if it and welcome an esteemed panel of experts who are committed to achieving this very mission. With that, i have the great pleasure of turning the program over to chris yang, the cofounder and chief counsel at the demand justice who will help moderate our conversation. Thanks everyone and please enjoy this important conversation. Come on up. [applause] [background sounds] all right, welcome to this very important conversation on diversity judiciary. I like to introduce our extent panel sitting directly to my right is dean Danielle Holly walker, she dean and professor of law at Howard University school of law which im sure you know is the oldest historically black law school in the united states. Law professor, senator teaching on the federal courts and inequality in education among a number of other subjects. She also studied diversity in the Legal Profession prior to joining the howard faculty, shes an associate dean for Academic Affairs and a distinguished professor at at South Carolina and currently serves on the board of Lawyers Committee for civil rights. To her right we have an area in it was a Regional Council at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund better known as bullet and mulled up as one of the oldest but in legal rights, organization of the country and the overseas its litigation work in u. S. Court of appeals for the deepsea circuit fourth and 11th circuits is very possible for federal immigration policy work which includes issues related to enforcement immigrants attention and Administration Relief and ledges like depth proposals. To her right, where professor dennis, carmen, professor of law and chancellors met faculty and director of blood Government Program of the school. Is the recognized expert on federal court reform and written coauthored entitled how to save the Supreme Court. In 2017, appointed to the American Constitution Society for board of directors and served as an academic advisor. Hes also senior fellow at cap and last but certainly not least, to my far right is sharon mccown, she is chief strategy and then of legal the country his largest and oldest organization committed to achieving full recognition of civil rights for lgbt queue and People Living with hiv and previously she served in the obama ministration as a Principal Deputy chief of the Civil Rights Division of the department of justice. When youre in her time at doj, sharon was repeatedly recognized by the attorney general and reset the work words for her role in convincing the administration to stop defending socalled defense of a marriage act. Developing legal argue acts of Marriage Equality in them and other important initiatives. We have a very esteemed and appropriately enough Diverse Panel here. With a lot of experience. Sort of looking at how the course fit into our democracy and the one hand, i feel like we probably all understand why we are here, why its important to hear on the other hand, i think its probably worth taking a few minutes to talk about why diversity on the federal bench is so important. And i think maybe one great way to think about this conversation or start the conversation is by asking sharon, clause the Supreme Court is going to be considering cases on tuesday regarding their not people can be fired based on their Sexual Orientation or general identity and is what he mentioned, less than 1 percent i think about a dozen, a voracious federal judges identify as being lgbt queue so that sort of an interesting way to think about the impact and diversity so sharon would you like to get started for why we are here. They identify. Its interesting to think about traditional diversity in this context because this case is in many ways very much a straightforward statutory construction case. This is about whether or not the term sex covers discrimination when i am fired for having a wife but my male coworker is not. Or whether i could lose my job because my boss finds out i had transitioned. And assigned a different sex at birth but im still the same person and able to do the job whether or not my employer is able to fire me. In many ways we would argue it shouldnt matter who is sitting in the chair when you are looking at terms in statutes or looking at principles often well ingrained into our jurisprudence. What we know is that who sits in the chair does matter. One way in which it plays out in cases like the ones going to be heard in front of the Supreme Court tuesday is that we have a lot of work to do to educate the court about who lgbt people are. Particularly who transgender people are. Because we see opponents on the other side making radical and completely divorce some fax arguments about who transgender people are, who the Lgbtq Community are, what giving full rights under the law would mean in terms of the praise of parables. We have to assume that we need to do that work in a way that if we had greater confidence that we had a judiciary that was representative of full range of community that it might not be as necessary. Its important when we think beyond the Supreme Court to the court of appeals where the overwhelming majority of the cases are decided since we know so few cases made to the Supreme Court and at the District Court as well where there is such an important moment of determining whether or not individuals will not only have their rights adjudicated fairly but whether or not they will be treated with respect and dignity they deserve. I think its quite interesting as weve seen the waves of judicial nominations working their way to the senate often rubberstamped by the judiciary in the full senate. We have individuals who are not willing to commit they will refer delinquent in her courtroom by the appropriate gender pronouns. We also know we have litigants who are unwilling to actually affirm on the record that brown versus board of education was correctly decided to stop for anyone who is relying on the rule of law and we obviously know that the lgbt president s a a having individuals who are not able to not only bring their Life Experience but even capable of actually affirming some of the key precedents that have allowed us to make progress with respect to diverse and inclusion in our country is a sign of the precarious times we are in i think thats an interesting point because you certainly dont have to be an lgbtq person yourself to find or understand the discrimination just like you dont have to be a person of color or a woman to have these rulings that have begun to calm down. I do think having that perspective is important to build confidence in our democracy. I think the other things we talk about diversity, i will say that just having this conversation expands already the conversation around diversity often centers around gender, such as around race, and always churches work about Sexual Orientation, gender identity, theres not enough report around religion or people with disabilities. I think as we think about having a judiciary that represents the breath of American People but also the breath of the Legal Profession having more professional diversity is incredibly important as well. Thank you for having us today and putting together this big report. I encourage people to take a look at it, it has really resting statistics over time. Just looking at the present. In terms of thinking about appointments to the federal bench. In terms of other kinds of diversity, we often talk about professional diversity but really dont interrogate fairly what that means or it think to other parts of how we might think about diversity. We have a Supreme Court that is pretty well does a great job of representing the different boroughs of new york city. For example, it does not do a great job of representing the different regions of the country. We have a Supreme Court that does a great job of representing Harvard Law School and Yale Law School stop it doesnt do a great job of representing the rest of the country. We have a Supreme Court and federal courts in general that do a great job of representing Corporate Lawyers, prosecutors, not a great job of representing workers, labor, consumers. Public defenders. Those kinds of professions are less part of the background of people who get to the federal bench. He might ask why is it important to have people from the west or the south people who are public defenders people who maybe had a different path from law school or their professions may be veterans, why is it important to have those people . Part of it is every judge brings a lot of background to cases to thinking about facts. In brings an expertise of a lifetime of work in different sectors. What we want is the federal bench that has a lot of experience with different areas of the law not just one area of the law thats representing different kinds of parties and thinking about and hearing different kinds of arguments. Thats good for the rule of law and the kind of deliberation we want on courts and among judicial panels within the Supreme Court. That is something we are lacking and need to think more about as we go through appointments going forward. When we think about how we get a more diverse judiciary, the same to say President Trump is turning the clock back would be generous as he does have the fewest people of color dominated since president reagan and has not yet nominated or not yet had confirmed a single africanamerican or hispanic judge to the Circuit Court. As he is reaching record pieces and record numbers of Circuit Court judges none of them have been African American or hispanic. I think mold off and the National Hispanic leadership agenda in particular has taken a leading role in noting the need for diversity and saying they would oppose all circuit judges until President Trump nominated hispanic judge to the Circuit Court and now hes done that im wondering if you can talk to us about how you guys came to that position and what you do now that President Trump is finally nominated a single latino to the Circuit Court and how you will evaluate her nomination. Thank you for having me here. This is such an important conversation for the entire country. All of us are invested in the integrity of our courts. Every single day. Making sure our courts are representative of america is incredibly important to everyone, not just racial minorities or other minorities and underrepresented historically underrepresented groups. For the National Hispanic leadership agenda which is a coalition of 45 Latino National organizations across the country who are invested in everything from civil rights to the environment to healthcare. We really looked at the issues we care about which are an issue that everybody cares about and the fact that this particular president has been so terrible on his record of nominating individuals from diverse backgrounds across all boards was so absurd and unacceptable. We reached a point and really for us the breaking point was that there was a retirement in the fifth circuit. The fifth circuit at the time had the highest proportion of latinos living in the circuit. So today the fifth circuit is almost 30 latino. There are no Circuit Court judges on the circuit abfor the us that really really hit a point where we felt like it was incredibly important that we stake out a position that clearly articulated how absurd this is. We took the position that we would oppose all Circuit Court judges until and when the president nominated and confirmed the Senate Confirmed a wellqualified Latino Latina judge. The reason why we say wellqualified is because as you read the report which i echoed sentiments to read it, has a lot of wonderful information in it but if you read the report particularly in part two theres a good summary of the need for diversity on different fronts. Descriptive diversity versus subsidence diversity i think is what it characterizes it as. What we are really getting is the descriptive diversity making sure that you are able to say yes we have x percent latino judges, hispanic judges on the bench which looking at the general judiciary as a whole is incredibly low compared to the general population for latinos. You got 6. 6 percent of all federal judges are latino and we are all over 18 percent of the population. As you look at the Circuit Court judges, the number gets far worse. Particularly of this president and who he is nominating. The representation for our community. Wellqualified is incredibly important to us. We look at the record of the judge or the nominee if they have not been adjudged before. We look at the entirety of it because what we are really getting to is, we want diversity on the bench. We want descriptive diversity but we need to have substantive representation on the bench as well. We need to make sure that nominee understands civil rights law understands in poignant cases, he understands the importance of the challenges that workers face when they come to the court seeking to enforce their right. But they understand voting rights, that they understand Immigration Law because all of these things are so important to our community and particularly as an organization that litigates we need to know that the nominees that are being put forth and being confirmed are those who qualify and competent to handle the cases we work on every single day. We are very much investing not just in descriptive representation we need to make sure those judges who are being put up are not just being put up as tokens but rather being put up because they are going to be good neutral arbiters of justice. Thats how we will review the record of the recent nominee Barbara Lebeau for the 11th circuit obviously that is a positive sign he has finally nominated someone. Its shameful its taken him that long its shameful we dont have one nominees who are representative of our country. Thats not to say that even if she is confirmed that the work is done, this administration has a lot of work to do this country has a lot of work to do to reach representation for all judicial positions. Conservatives often defend the record of President Trump and even before that president george w. Bush who is a little bit better nowhere near what he should have been. They say well its not their fault they are putting forward diverse judges because the most important thing to them is judicial philosophy. By which they supposedly mean a regionalism and adhering to a constitution that excluded women and people of color and immigrants as well. To the extent that they are the outcome driven in my opinion. Can you blame them for having such a nondiverse judiciary pee dee what do you think is the longterm outcome if only one president nominees reflect the diversity of the country and anothers doesnt . I share your view that this has been an issue that has galvanized the right wing. Theyve had a longterm game plan on this. In many ways its not a coincidence that there arent necessarily binders full of women and people of color who are espousing to their particular judicial philosophy because its one that is not necessarily even consistently applied or genuine in its own terms because i think its obviously informed by certain outcomes its trying to achieve. I do think what that means though is that we need to make sure when we are talking about diversity on the bench, we are challenging the narratives that i think weve seen and i find particularly troubling that anyone who is coming from something other than a straight white male background should automatically be viewed with skepticism because they might be an activist. They might have an agenda. I think about the ways in which judge Vaughn Walker who was not out as an openly gay man when he was confirmed but came out this time on the bench. He had someone who has since been confirmed by the administration as a judge challenges ability to sit on a case involving lgbt people and lgbt rights on the assumption that inherently he was going to be biased. We saw Constance Baker motley face the same challenges. I think this is where the deep systemic racism homophobia sexism comes into play with the assumption that if you are white you are neutral. If you are male you are neutral. If you are straight you are neutral and if youre not those things then you are presumptively biased, have an agenda, cant be trusted to administer fair and impartial justice. I think that plays out with respect to the diversity of perfection. Whether its public defenders. The idea that someone like Ruth Bader Ginsburg comes out the background of aclu womens Rights Advocacy no matter how wellestablished the cases are in the jurisprudence the idea that we see what happened to a number of nominees in the Obama Administration we are taking on clients that raised very deep issues about race and the criminal Justice System inherently became suggestions these people were not qualified to be fair and impartial to ab we need to interrogate some of the biases that play out in terms of assessing who can be fair, whos capable of being a good judge and think about the ways in which that tracks along systemic racism, homophobia, sexism etc. The report does with the job of ringing up, the notion that being a judge is just the pinnacle of many peoples legal careers and our profession is doing a terrible job. Of increasing diversity. We are still at a point where this is essentially the lack of diversity in the judiciary, yes its about judicial philosophy but it really at its core is about a lack of racial diversity, a lack of other kinds of diversity in our profession in general. If you look at where we are now, only about 14. 5 percent of all lawyers are nonwhite. That means our judiciary is unlikely to do better than that if we have a profession that still does not reflect the diversity of the united states. Only about less than five percent of lawyers about 4. 8 percent of all lawyers are africanamerican. Stained statistics for Asian Americans and about five percent of all lawyers are hispanic. That means our profession is one in which we are not diverse so we can expect that at the top of the profession including Law Firm Partners including judges, that we will see a tremendous lack of diversity. One of the things that the report really does is talk about lack of diversity in the judiciary, you cannot talk about it in isolation. There is no way to talk about diversity among the judiciary without talking about diversity in the Legal Profession until we address those systemic problems in our profession, we will never get to a point where we have a diverse judiciary. Without a diverse judiciary going back to your question about why is this so critical, there are whole swaths of our american society, our fabric, that have no faith in our judicial system. Either on the criminal side or the civil side. When you have the eroding of basic Democratic Institutions like the judiciary, you end up with chaos. I think we are seeing the results of that. In racial diversity and diversity of all other kinds including diversity of profession i think is very key to establishing to litigants and even people who do not find themselves in the court system you will see especially when you ask young people about how they feel about going into learn what they feel about our current criminal Justice System they express almost no confidence in what is happening in a Core Institution in our democracy until we address the questions of diversity in the profession and then of course address them at all of these various levels at the top of the profession we will not see that confidence in our judiciary grow and without that we are in serious jeopardy of seeing all of our institutions erode. I think that is exactly right. Im going to stick with you because you sort of literally your job to sort of figure out how to get the lawsuit in your school and at large lawyers of color and beyond into these positions and into the highest levels. We have a lot of work to do, what sort of the things you are doing and how are your experiences help lift these lawyers up . I think one of the things that i realize coming to howard this is my sixth year at howard before that i taught at predominantly white institutions and i attended a predominantly white law school. I think one of the things i recognize now that im in howard is that 50 of all africanamerican lawyers graduated from an hbcus. 80 of all every american judges went to historically black colleges or institutions. We do not think about those kinds of fundamentals as a profession when we say, we want to talk about diversity in the judiciary. A lot of times we will take judicial education, recruiting of judges, everywhere except the place where you can actually find people who can fill those spots. We ignore the institution that actually has a track record of producing diverse individuals for the depression. I would say the same about the histrionics being institutions. For us Pipeline Programs are extremely important for the profession in general. We are doing a program at howard where we are inviting the federal judiciary partnering with the federal judiciary to do recruitment fairs where they talk about how you pipeline into the federal judiciary at howard. Actually at the law school inviting them to come there to do general panels better for everyone but to do them in sites where you are most likely to get a Diverse Group of lawyers. The other thing is to track people and try to educate them about what are considered to be the prerequisites to becoming a judge. A lot of law students do not understand that aspect of it. We have to talk to them about the importance of having judicial clerkship, the importance of networking with organizations like acs to make sure they are thought of in the same group of people being recruited. Making the pipelines very clear about how you eventually have an opportunity to be appointed but i would really encourage and i think what we see in the report is to actually ask ourselves the hard questions about if we are going to grow to democracy more lgbtq judges were the places we can actually find people to recruit . If we continue the same patterns of recruitment and promotion of law students, promotion of the lawyers will never change the outcomes that we see in this report. The only way to change them is to change our fundamental way of looking at the profession and the way we do all forms of recruitment in the profession stop. I think thats great in terms of building up existing issues about. I also think one of the, there are a lot of striking statistics that come out of this report but one that was compelling to me is think about the visual markers of becoming a judge. One thing we are familiar with is a clerkship, your first year of law school i think sort of intuitively understood donated by white and male lawyers. With respect to law school, and in particular the Supreme Court but overall the courts are dominated by lawyers who go to these top 14 top 20 law schools, in the report it notes that on the top 30 law schools 58 percent of white law students graduate from the top 30 law schools compared to only 10 of asian students, eight percent of hispanic students and five percent of black students. When we think about how we are cutting down when you look at resumes and look in the most important thing is what law school you went to and whether or not you clerk you are eliminating potentially 95 percent of black lawyers or 90 of hispanic and Asian American lawyers. In clerkship on top of that it was striking to me in the Obama White House how important the clerkship was and i admit i never did one maybe i dont understand but for those who did, do we pick the right amount of emphasis on the clerkship . To me its like the thing you do right out of law school is that really from your experience helpful indicator for becoming a judge or being a successful judge on the line . I will start as a professor by saying to any students out there who are thinking about applying for clerkships. Its a thing you should do its a great way to spend a year. I think people put too much emphasis on clerkships in terms of can you be an excellent jurist. Without having done the clerkship. Obviously you can. We have amazing lawyers in all parts of our country who have gone to different kinds of law schools, some have done District Court clerkships, some have done Court Appeals some have never done court chips. We have people who have done great abyou can find that out in a lot of different ways. There are other ways to see the quality of peoples work because the reality is, no ones becoming a judge year after they finished their clerkship. They will spend a decade, two decades working as an attorney. Accepted this administration where apparently can be out of school for five minutes as long as you went to the adf boot camp then you get to be a judge. In the general case people have a fair bit of experience. We can look to that as a way to see who is qualified, what kind of skills they have as lawyers and would be bringing to the bench. I think that theres a bit of an over emphasis given that as we think about things in most places and careers the things you did when you were younger should matter less and less as you get older because he done a lot more things in the interim. I think that should apply in this case that there are a lot of places. The other thing i would add on this is a big component of how we should think about who should be judges. Where we get the pool judges, actually urging people to apply and thinking about how the structures are for who gets to be a judge. Theres a lot of variations statebystate, senators by senators, depending on a four federal system or state system in some cases the selection of judges is almost who people know and who people are friends with and whos in their social networks. In other cases there are commissions that come together and take applicants, look at them, consider who they are and so part of what we need to think about is what are the systems we are designing to figure out who gets to be a judge if we are relying on Informal Networks you will get a very different kind of system then if you have a more open application process that everyone can apply into. At the same time we need to do more to encourage people if we have an open system to apply. I think one of the challenges for Something Like being a judge for a lot of people you just dont think that is something that i could do. It might be something somebody else could do but if you didnt have the fancy degree, if you didnt have the fancy clerkship you might preemptively take yourself out even though you actually are extremely wellqualified and had a great career in the law. And would bring the kind of commitment to rule of law values we want to see in our judges. Part of it is encouraging people to see that this is a possibility. I agree with that and im sorry to jokingly interject. But at some point it was a serious one and the other side is very comfortable putting forth the people they want to see on the bench and to the extent there is that selfcensorship the selfselection of im not sure im ready need to be overcoming that and being as courageous and encouraging the Young Leaders in our community to be thinking about this as a profession. I also think its important to recognize not only are there things like clerkships that have some level of utility. I think being inside a chamber is a really interesting and important perspective but certainly not to the exclusion of many other ways in which to developed the experience we would want to see in good judges. This is another place where economic barriers come into play. The number of people who have talked about their financial burden they begin their law careers with and spend time digging out in the ways in which it channels them into certain professions there is often a financial ratification for taking a position of Public Service in the federal judiciary or even in the state court and we should also be thinking about state courts as another pipeline that could potentially be enhancing diversity on the bench where maybe there is easier Access Points or more varied access point as a way to make sure we are building because it will not happen overnight. Its really good to be something that will require a longterm investment before we will see the kinds of returns that are commensurate with where we are as a nation. I also wanted to pick up on nasa encouraging people to apply. From my experience helping president obama pick judges interviewing them obviously one of the questions you asked is why are you applying to be a judge . Why are you here today in particular for people with a lot of vacancies in the district or what makes the moment right. Disproportionately women and people of color would say because somebody told me to apply because somebody encouraged me to apply, a partner at judge opposing counsel encouraged me to. And disproportionately white men would say ive been thinking about this since my con law class were been thinking about this since i read to kill a mockingbird in high school its sort of this mentality and some of it is driven by being able to dream what you see so on the judiciary is 80 white or six to present male or 60 white male the condition from an early age to think about but how can we as lawyers, folks interested in law, do a better job of proactively identifying people and encouraging them to apply . From my perspective as a nonprofit lawyer reading the report, the statistic was four percent of people who work in the Public Interest represented in the federal judiciary. Which is incredibly sad. Knowing that there are, obviously they are wonderful lawyers but the Nonprofit Sector is very underrepresented and there is amazing people who dedicate their lives to Public Interest work outside the government. Looking at that and then looking at the community that i have here as a latina lawyer doing work that i know most of the time is going to be in the minority when it comes to what room i sit in. The importance of bar associations can be really helpful. The work that the Hispanic National bar does the work that they the affinity bars, its really important in providing that kind of connection to professionals to judges to people who have done that before. And have the knowledge base. What are the types of judgeships that might be interesting. Do i want to be a magistrate judge . What is that workload like . I think bar associations in addition to law school but bar associations can be really helpful in filling some of the knowledge gap. I cant agree more about the bar association. If you think of the National Bar Association and the Washington Bar association, they are incredibly important to that recruitment effort but i think we have to think of all the things as systemic. We cant do one off programs, oneoff panels, what we need to do is have a more comprehensive and systemic way to address the issues of lack of diversity in the profession. If the judiciary, for example, just the beginning foundation which is the foundation of africanamerican article 3 judges, they have a Pipeline Program that is for middle school students. We hosted at Howard Middle School students come and take about four weeks of classes that are all based in law. They take little mini tort class. They do a new court competition. Those are the kinds of things that hopefully we will have a day when lawyers of color are able to say the first time you thought about entering the judiciary was when not only when i was in con law but maybe when i did court when i was in high school. Thats the kind of systemic change we have to see and i think the report points very well to this notion that every single effort that we are engaged in we have to raise awareness about why its so important. Thats why i thought the first question was great. But also if we have failed up to this point we have been going at the diversity and inclusion effort in our profession now for 50 years. If we are still at the point where we see the dismal record thats reflected in this report, we really have to sit back and ask ourselves, are we starting too late . Are we started in college . Thats too late. We need to be starting in middle school and high school and encouraging whole people from organized communities to come into the profession and reach for the highest parts of the profession and i think that is something that unless you do it in a systemic way starting early will never be able to address the issue. I think the other systemic piece of this that we have to think about is that this entire process in the federal judiciary is a political one. Its a political process. Has sharon was saying earlier, if you are a straight white male you presumed to be neutral and if you are not, your presumed to be activists. I think that certainly is true if you look at literally Huffington Post did a photo spread at one point of the 30 judges that republicans had stopped there nominated by president obama. I think thats not by accident. Similarly, one of the reasons why the fifth circuit does not have any latino or latina judges is not for lack of trying. On behalf of the Obama Administration. But it was an ability to overcome the obstruction by senators cornyn and cruz and couldnt find hispanic judges if they were willing to support the infrastructure. It goes on and on in terms of public defenders and plaintiff lawyers and the whole side of Public Interest lawyers which i also think probably at least it seemed seems to me is where a lot of lawyers go. They dont all go to the clerkship corker Donna Corbett law partner track. Thats one reason why my organization is encouraging president ial candidates to make a commitment to not nominate any more Corporate Law partners to the federal bands during their administration. Thank you. I will take the applause. As a way of shaking it up as a way of having to up and the systemic biases within our system but im wondering if any folks have thoughts, i know you are not generally political practitioners but the political side of this, how we can get senators and president ial candidates to not just prioritize judges generally but prioritize them more diverse judiciary with diversity encompassing everything we hope could. I certainly would hope that those who did not have a lightbulb go off before now, recognize how much is at stake because we talk about the fact that however much longer in days, weeks, months, years this administration lasts, we are looking at a federal judiciary thats been snapped with people who have been appointed who were often at a point of their career they could be serving for 30 or 40 years. We have the trump judiciary for generations. I think part of this is about recognizing the need to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. The things i say and other presentations is whatever issue you care about most the federal judiciary should be the plus one you are bringing to any party because any issues actually will run to the courts to the point danielle was saying about different perceptions of credibility with respect to the judiciary its interesting the extent to which i think people still, while having deep skepticism about the judiciary in certain areas, particularly criminal justice, Still Holding on to hope that tomorrow the article 3 judges will save us from the worst of this administration. We have seen in junctions up against some of the worst things the administration has done but we cant count on the courts to protect us if we have it protected the courts. I think part of it is going to be about placing it in a higher order of priority when those from more progressive values are driving the agenda. I think it will be interesting now that we are only look at a 51 vote margin for lower judges that perhaps that will result in their being greater willingness to put forth the public defender or put forth a nonprofit advocate because there isnt this perception i have to go with somebody whos a least common denominator nominee. Part of it is going to be about requiring the progressives actually have the same amount of courage of their convictions weve seen from the other side. And not be afraid to put forth nominees that have records of advancing a view of the constitution that includes all of us. As opposed to individuals who made their careers on the backs of denigrating workers, eliminating productions for people of color, for undermining the humanity of lgbt people. Part of this is about having the courage of our convictions the way we seen the other side. I will just say that obviously the appointment and confirmation of judges should be a nonpartisan commitment to confirming excellent judges. That being said, because of the structure of our system i think hopefully what we see and what we can work to promote is this idea with the electorate how much power they have in the accountability and Holding Elected Officials accountable to the composition of our court. Because you do have a role to play. For latinos, we are over 18 percent of the population but if you look at School Age Children we are one in five. I say this, everywhere i can go, the face of the american electorate is going to get a lot more diverse its going to get specifically a lot more latino but pairing that if you look at the racial composition of the country its gonna get much more diverse as a whole. Longterm we need to be able to say we are holding our elected officials accountable for promoting our interest in all parts of the government and that includes the judiciary. If we are not seeing a judiciary thats representative of us, we have to remember who is responsible that and make sure we are being active and typically engaged in calling offices and raising this with our senators, raising this with the administration, whatever administration that is. Because even if we have a new administration in 2021, that administration is going to have a lot of work to do to catch up and get us to a different place and institute the structural change. Thats been talked about here. I think also remembering this is also about educating voters and educating the public about how important it is to be engaged on this issue. Am going to throw out one more provocative idea about networking and politics. I think with a lot of minority students and also Sexual Orientation minority students we encourage them not to be political. Because of these challenges around being seen as neutral around being seen as someone who is not involved in abut thats where you make connections. If you dont go to fundraisers, if you dont participate in doorknocking. If you dont get behind candidates, no one knows who you are. Even if you are very well qualified you dont have the political connections. I think we need to address encouraging that objectivity. I would like to jump on the bandwagon in terms of discouraging Law Firm Partners even though a lot of the people who been appointed to the federal judiciary who are diverse candidates especially africanamericans come from big law. Maybe we should also take on a commitment to not encourage a continuation of nominees exclusively from harvard and yale. And make a Firm Commitment to that. I say that as a graduate of both institutions. Lets make a Firm Commitment to the next democratic president appointing no judges from harvard and yale. I can guarantee you based on the statistics you just said we will have a much more racially and ethnically religiously and Sexual Orientation diverse pool of nominees if we stop the overreliance on those two schools. Thats one of our major problems we refuse to address if we keep relying, i love president obama, one of my favorite people, but is nominees of color look just like white nominees. They went to the same schools. That means you are narrowing down to a very small category of people. I hope the next democratic president will say i refuse to follow the same playbook, they will change the entire paradigm of how they think about whose quality dont qualify for these positions. Suddenly no Corporate Lawyer sounds very conservative. Come to think about that its fascinating. I want to make sure we have time for folks with another question for our delightful panel. I notice you didnt mention economic diversity. Most lawyers are welloff, generally ahow do we address that issue . Integrate question it ties partly to the questions of professional diversity and what kinds of experience people have. What kinds of backgrounds they come from. It can be both their own personal experiences but it also can be the kind of work they do. We have lots of lawyers who do excellent work whose primary role is to represent poor people and workingclass people. We see fewer of them on the bench. There is fewer labor lawyers on the bench. Theres fewer people who work at nonprofits that are focused on those communities who are on the bench. Thats a place where you could spend a lot of time representing clients and you could be an excellent lawyer and understand the intricacies of the legal system. If you think about it, if you are a criminal defendant and every single judge in the entirety of the judicial system has spent her whole career as a prosecutor you ask yourself do you think you would get a fair shake . Theres a level of public legitimacy than having a diversity of experience and backgrounds everyone has the same, its hard to people think they will get a fair shake. Its true when we think about how polarized the courts are becoming as well. We want to preserve the legitimacy of our courts. That gets to the economic piece of it as well. What we go to the next question. I would like to ask what the role of building the alliance for Justice Building the bench for alliance for justice. The organizations are from liberal judges. What roles do they have . I wont speak on behalf of alliance for justice but i know that alliance for justice and the American Constitution Society are doing an aggressive job of reaching out building the network and trying to identify candidates to pensioni nominated as an act democratic president. They are formalizing this informal sense of encouraging people to throw their hat in to become a judge. I think part of this is if we rely on the current infrastructure, its very circular. The pickup the phone and you ask a judge who do you think might be good to serve on your court, they will think back the former law clerk surveyors or that theyve seen in the court or think about the Corporate Partners or the prosecutors theyve seen in the court often. They dont think about the people doing a lot of the other work, sharing the same social social circles. I think acs has been doing this work for some time, im a little bit bias being on the board of advisors but the alliance for justice as well and partnering with other organizations to build these networks and start planning ahead so that when there are vacancies coming up we are not looking around for the first time saying, do you want to do it . Then we grew people and hopefully its even a longerterm product then just looking for immediate vacancies. Thats a great question. I have a question about, as we seek equity and justice by diversifying the judiciary, how do you think it plays abif we are seeking equity why should it result from more diverse judiciary instead of overhauling the entire system . That such a great question. Honestly, its a question that when i tried to encourage students to get clerkships they say that would require me to participate in a system i feel is fundamentally unjust in a racist system. Youre asking me to become a part of that system. I think what i always say is, there is no way around it but through it. Its unlikely you are going to build structural change completely from the outside of existing institutions. You have to understand the existing institutions, you have to be willing to participate in those institutions understand them and through that create more avenues for structural change. Its very unlikely that without understanding our current institution, and im not saying that you commit to doing that for the rest of your career, but i think there is a lot to be learned from that system. We all have our roles to play. While some people who are crusaders for justice, like judge damon keith, he recently passed away. He was a crusader for justice who was a federal judge for most of his career. I give them examples of people like Constance Baker motley and others like awho are truly people who are interested in the progress and civil rights of all people but they are doing it from inside the system and thats completely possible. Your classmates might be doing it from other places more like what you see like people on the stage but there is a role for people who are very interested in the kind of structural overhaul of this system to play a role inside the system. I think in many ways the same kind of critique and argument can be made about going into government lawyering positions as well. I know that the Justice Department i joined in 2010 was a Justice Department that was defending dont ask dont tell, to fencing the defense it ab and i had to make that choice when i was leaving and lgbt Advocacy Organization was i prepared to put that part of my lawyering life on the shelf knowing that there was other work id be able to do within that role and as it turned out, the right people in the right place at the right time can often change institutions and really radical in dramatic ways but it does require a personal decision about where your lines are and what gives you value and satisfaction in terms of how you are using your professional life. To the extent certainly that the positions within the government is a different pipeline to judiciary as well i would say the same calculus should probably be in the front center. In addition to the point that there is different roles for different people and you might have preferences but its going to take people on the outside and the inside to make progress. The other thing i would say is theres a lot of benefit for people who are on the outside going to the inside of people in the inside to spend time on the outside and you get to see what its like in these other rules but the constraints are people face. If your advocate on the outside and you had experience inside guesstimate, you have a much better sense of what are the constraints people facing . What are the challenges . That will make you better advocate on the outside. If youre in government you have a better sense of how advocates think and how to think about organizing when youre on the inside. There is a benefit to if its the kind of thing you have skill set or interest in both you dont have to see these as a choice you can only do one or another. There are a lot of examples of people who have done both. I am a student from the university of pennsylvania. You guys mentioned that the lack of legal diversity and also the lack of diversity on judicial panels is a systemic issue. You mentioned the program with middle school students. That still seems like a oneoff solution in my opinion. What are some ways that governments like local governments or state governments can be accountable and try to affect change in this area . I think as i look at that issue to me it comes down to much bigger changes about our society and access to education. Access to services that are necessary to live a healthy productive life. Part of it is that i think a lot of our students a lot of minority students are not getting access to quality education in the way that sets them up to the pipelines of these different types of progressions. So maybe a oneoff program just focus on a middle school here is it sufficient for the whole integrity. Part of it is that we are looking at the issue of who is getting access to the type of information thats needed to know, if i want to be a lawyer these are the types of things i need to do or even the concept of do i want to be a lawyer and wonders that come in . Ever talks where abdiscusses how she didnt really see herself in the role she is in today almost ever until it happened. If you dont see diverse judges if you dont see diverse lawyers, its going to be very hard for you as it early on to see yourself in that profession. For me i didnt need a lawyer and tell i had already graduated from college. I didnt see myself as a lawyer until sometime after that. And when i met those lawyers, i think i met like one lawyer of color so by the time i went to law school i knew one lawyer of color and that was it. I think part of it is as we increase diversity in the profession its about access to education so you can have the fundamental Building Blocks to go on to whatever profession it is you want to do in this case the legal one but also increasing diversity in the legal field so that people can see in your community where you live that they are actually lawyers of color that there are judges of color and that thats important. Quietly take one last question. It was mentioned that we will have a trunk judiciary for generations. How do you see this impacting the way social justice is executed in the courts on behalf of organizations that focus on impact litigation such as maldef and held the following generations will use the courts to achieve change . I can answer this one. We talked about this a lot whether maldef or land to legal or other organizations. We know that with an increasingly number of federal judges being confirmed by this president that is something that needs to be taken into account. Not all of these judges are necessarily cut from the same cloth. There are some, a bucket of the judges that are the judges we might have gotten under any other administration and then there are the extra special ones who have been appointed not despite but because of their records of earlobes and worker advocacy, we have people with very troubling records around issues of race and immigration. They are going to be in the mix. Weve always known they were out there from any judge. I think weve always had to be aware in moving forward with cases that you could potentially wind up with a judge, theres one judge in the northern aof texas is not a trump appointee but became the Home Field Advantage for everyone who wanted to go strike down an Obama Administration policy that enhanced equity or diversity in our country. In that sense theres gonna be strategic calculations that need to go into litigation but the other thing i say to people is we need to remember that judges live in communities. To the extent that part of the work we are all doing is creating social norms and expectations about what the rule of law should mean. That inherently in my view will create some amount, however subconscious of a check on what any individual judge prepares themselves to do knowing that they have to be in their church or in their Grocery Store or at their Little League game the next week. I think part of what we need to do is remember how important it is to demand fairness and integrity within the courts but not assume that those are little ecosystems that dont actually interact with the rest of our country and make sure we are also creating an environment of lyrical and social accountability because that is the thing that i fear may be the best tool we have and in some ways gives me hope its the best tool we have to check what might otherwise be this potential to engage in really ideological access by individuals who are appointed in an environment that suggests that no matter how troubling your record might have been you are now sitting in the seat with the rope and get to do what you want we have to create an environment in which there are other social norms that check those excesses and pulses. The other thing i would add, i think your question is exactly right. What are we going to do . I think it starts with not accepting the status quo. I think that from our perspective at aband other groups as well, republicans stole the Supreme Court seed from president obama and gave it to neil gorsuch. Then republicans ran through Brett Kavanaugh without a fair process. The number nine of the Supreme Court is not a magic number. Its been changed seven times before. We think we need to add two seats people say four seats some people have buried her plans on how to change the Supreme Court but these are the kinds of things we cant resign ourselves to the fact that we will have trunk judiciary in addition to the stealing Supreme Court seed from president obama republicans brought lockton for reporting 50 or 60 other judges in his last two years we should seriously look to expand the lower courts as well because thats the way we are going to get greater balance in the short term in addition to stepbystep measures. With that, i dont know if anybody has parting thoughts, i honestly dont know i suspect weve already run over our time but i wanted to give folks a chance if they had any parting thoughts from anything they didnt get chance to say in response to a question or otherwise. If not. Thanks to the center for American Progress for this opportunity and for this incredibly important report. I know that there is a followon report on professional diversity coming. Which was part of the conversation here and it will be an important part of any conversation on diversifying our courts. I look forward to seeing that report i look forward to seeing all of you back here for the panel that im sure will ensue but thank you to cap it all of you for joining us. Have a nice day. [applause] [inaudible background conversations] starting now, its booktv on cspan2. Good evening everyone per go on behalf the borders bookstore in q2 this evenings event in