I’m amused but not surprised by this BuzzFeed article reporting that some liberal advocacy groups are complaining about the insufficient “professional and racial diversity” in President Biden’s first slate of eleven judicial nominees.
By my count, nine of the eleven nominees are female, five are African American, three are Asian American—I’m including one who is Arab American (as well as Muslim)—and one is Latina. All three of the nominees to federal appellate positions are African American women. None of the nominees is a white male (unless you count the Arab American as white).
As for professional diversity, the article reports that the slate includes “four former public defenders and a civil rights lawyer.”
As you might have guessed, Latino advocacy groups are “extremely disappointed” that only one of the nominees is of Latino ethnicity and are slamming the Biden administration’s “apparent obtuseness about the importance of the Latino community in the nation’s legal system.” Perhaps adding to the insult, that lone nominee, Regina Rodriguez, is “an attorney with a corporate-focused practice and a former assistant US attorney.” Meanwhile, other groups on the Left are objecting that none of the nominees has “genuine experience representing consumers and workers.”
I’ve already highlighted law professor John McGinnis’s superb essay on the theoretical and practical problems with the Left’s heavy emphasis on diversity, or representativeness, as a criterion in selecting judges. Even if one accepts the wrongheaded emphasis on judges as representatives, it ought to be obvious that it’s very difficult, if not mathematically impossible, for any slate of nominees to reflect whatever particular mix of race/ethnicity, gender, and professional background one might regard as ideal.
Of course, what is really going on is a fight over the political spoils of judicial nominations. As the article quotes one diversity proponent, “In a system where squeaky wheels get grease, you have to squeak.” You can expect to hear a lot more squeaking.