President-elect Joe Biden plans to prioritize more diversity for judges in the nation’s federal courts, a departure from President Donald Trump’s return to mostly white, male appointees.
Although much of the recent political energy focuses on the Supreme Court and whether to make structural changes there, it is the hundreds of lower district and circuit courts that have the ultimate say in all but the several dozen cases the highest court decides each year.
Some Democratic senators and liberal advocacy groups want Biden to use his nominees to make the historically white and male federal bench better represent the U.S. population at a time when police misconduct against minorities, racial inequity in the criminal justice system and public displays of white nationalism have caused political unrest. Read more…