I’ve already observed that by President Biden’s declared standard of demographic diversity, his judicial nominations have been a remarkable success. I’ve previously used his appellate nominees in general and his extraordinary record of black female appellate nominees in particular to illustrate the point. With Biden’s two most recent appellate nominees, the record on the latter has become even more amazing: nine of his twenty appellate nominees—45%—have been black women. (Black women appear to account for two to three percent of lawyers.)
Biden’s 62 district-court nominees to date also reflect remarkable demographic diversity. By my count, more than three-quarters of the nominees (47) have been women, and two-thirds have been racial or ethnic minorities. Biden has nominated no more than three white men to district judgeships (and at least one of the three wins diversity points for being openly gay).
Here’s my best quick stab at the numbers. I’m sure that I’ve made some errors, and I haven’t tried to take account of mixed-race identities, but the general picture should be accurate and might even understate the diversity.
I have several times 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. Nothing in this post should be mistaken as an endorsement of that emphasis.