Obama has a higher rate of appointing women and minorities to the courts than any of his predecessor

Source: Think Progress

Yesterday, the Philadelphia Inquirer highlighted Republicans’ successful efforts to obstruct President Obama from appointing judges to the federal courts. Despite these efforts, the Inquirer notes, Obama has had a higher “rate of appointing women and people of color…than those of any of his precessors during their first year of their terms”:

So far, nearly half of Obama’s 73 appointments to the federal bench have been women, 25 percent have been African American, 11 percent Asian American, and 10 percent Hispanic. About 30 percent of Obama’s nominees were white males. By contrast, two-thirds of George W. Bush’s nominees were white males.

Obama’s rate of appointing women and people of color is higher than those of any of his predecessors during the first year of their terms.

Unfortunately, Republicans have shown a historically high level of obstruction in blocking Obama’s appointees. While Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan had 91 percent of their judicial appointees confirmed in their first year of office, Obama only had 36 percent of them approved by the U.S. Senate.


Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/2010/07/12/obama-higher-rate-women/

Not that this is surprising. BTW, who unrecced this?! :shrug:

:)

Then the judiciary would be more representative.

or a Sandra Day O'Connor than an Earl Warren

:sarcasm:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Warren

There are indeed progressive white men. I'm simply saying I'd have no problem with others than white men getting a turn.

than someone like Thomas or O'Connor. Any day of the year. But then again, I would rather have a Thurgood Marshall than an Antonin Scalia, any day of the year. What matters to me is not their gender or race, but what they believe in.

:thumbsup:

The question has to have an assumption behind it.

Your obvious choices are "population at large" or "applicant pool"--or some other subgroup. Perhaps age, geographical distribution, sex, experience. But when there's a mismatch between the applicant pool and the population at large--and with the set of lawyers that meet the general requirements for being appointed judges there is going to be lots of really big mismatches--some principle is going to yield.

I usually opt for making the end product look like the applicant pool at every stage--or having damned good reasons for having the end product be different. If there's a mismatch, find the reason and try to fix it. Greater drop-out of blacks in law school? Why? Fewer applicants to law school? Why? Fewer graduates from 4-year colleges? Why? Greater dropout by black men than black women? Why? Fewer blacks to go prestigious schools? Why?

And when it comes to fixing them, how do you respond?

I don't want correlation confused with causation and personally like Occam's razor to help provide some clarity. I find that too often in this kind of study, where the set of assumptions going in yields the conclusions--but we already knew the conclusions, so the confirmation is welcomed and celebrated.

It makes for slower change because then you have to fix the fundamental problems instead of artificially salving over the problems later on; it's a slow slog that doesn't allow much chest-thumping and messianism. However, it allows a long-term change in the direction of "no privileges" instead of keeping the same system and just reranking how privilege is assigned. It makes for wide-ranging social equality instead of making sure some specific numbers look right.

That is the only measure that counts in my opinion. Courts are fully packed with pro-corporates these days.

:(