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Racial Diversity On The Bench: Beyond Role Models And Public Confidence, Sherrilyn A. Ifill

Faculty Scholarship

The lack of racial diversity on our nation’s courts threatens both the quality and legitimacy of judicial decision-making. Traditional arguments emphasizing the “role model” value of black judges and the need for black judges to help promote “public confidence” in the justice system have turned our attention away from the most important justification for judicial diversity: Diversity on the bench can enrich judicial decision-making by including a variety of voices and perspectives in the deliberative process. In this Article, the Author advocates racial diversity among judges as a critical means of achieving cultural pluralism in judicial decision-making.

Judicial diversity advocates …