"Diversity on the bench is critical. As practitioners, you need judges who 'get it!' We need judges who understand what discrimination feels like. We need judges who understand what inequality feels like. We need judges who understand the subtleties of unfair treatment and who are willing to call it out when they see it!"
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Diversity on the bench is not a box to check but a practical requirement for justice. The point is both simple and demanding: the law operates through human judgment, and human judgment is sharpened by experience. When lawyers say they need judges who "get it", they are speaking about the difference between reading the record and grasping the lived reality behind it. Discrimination and inequality often operate in shades and subtext, through coded language, pretextual explanations, and accumulated slights that may look innocuous in isolation. A judge who has felt or closely witnessed those dynamics is more likely to recognize them when they surface in a case and more willing to call them out.
That recognition does not undermine impartiality; it refines it. Many legal standards turn on context: the reasonableness of a search, the credibility of a witness, the presence of pretext in an employment decision, the totality of circumstances in a sentencing factor. Without an informed understanding of how bias manifests, a formally neutral rule can entrench unequal outcomes. Lived experience operates here as a kind of evidentiary literacy, helping judges distinguish the ordinary from the ominous, the coincidence from the pattern.
The emphasis falls not only on demographic diversity but also on professional and socioeconomic variety. Courts benefit from judges who have represented indigent clients, navigated housing court, or worked in civil rights, labor, immigration, or disability law. Such breadth widens the benchs sightlines and improves the accuracy of fact-finding and legal reasoning.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz speaks from the vantage point of democratic accountability, highlighting why judicial selection matters. A judiciary that mirrors the pluralism of the public it serves is better positioned to safeguard equal justice under law. Empathy is not a bias; it is an instrument for seeing the whole case. Calling out unfair treatment is not activism; it is the core judicial duty to name reality as it is and to apply the law accordingly.
That recognition does not undermine impartiality; it refines it. Many legal standards turn on context: the reasonableness of a search, the credibility of a witness, the presence of pretext in an employment decision, the totality of circumstances in a sentencing factor. Without an informed understanding of how bias manifests, a formally neutral rule can entrench unequal outcomes. Lived experience operates here as a kind of evidentiary literacy, helping judges distinguish the ordinary from the ominous, the coincidence from the pattern.
The emphasis falls not only on demographic diversity but also on professional and socioeconomic variety. Courts benefit from judges who have represented indigent clients, navigated housing court, or worked in civil rights, labor, immigration, or disability law. Such breadth widens the benchs sightlines and improves the accuracy of fact-finding and legal reasoning.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz speaks from the vantage point of democratic accountability, highlighting why judicial selection matters. A judiciary that mirrors the pluralism of the public it serves is better positioned to safeguard equal justice under law. Empathy is not a bias; it is an instrument for seeing the whole case. Calling out unfair treatment is not activism; it is the core judicial duty to name reality as it is and to apply the law accordingly.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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