Assess The Importance Of Diversity In The Judiciary

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Diversity has been recognised as a valuable initiative in the advancement of a workplace, however recent studies in England and Wales show that the judiciary remains largely imbalanced . For decades diversity has been a central matter within the legal sphere but according to a recent report by the Council of Europe published at the end of 2014, women only make up 25% of judges in England and Wales and to this day, Lady Hale remains the only representative for women in the Supreme Court . Furthermore, diversity statistics in 2015 concluded that the percentage of BME judges remains unchanged at 7%. Damning statistics such as these prove that the judiciary is currently in a detrimental situation, particularly because diversifying the workplace encourages innovation: ‘There is a large body of evidence going back many decades which shows that more culturally diverse businesses are more innovative. Recent research also shows that workforce diversity is also …show more content…

Michael King and Colin May emphasise the lack of understanding between BME parties and white, male judges to a have a detrimental impact on BME defendants; they criticised the lack of diversity in the judiciary and believe that “impressionistic accounts and limited empirical evidence suggest that they are more likely to be prosecuted than white people” . It is therefore plausible to assume that having a diverse judiciary across the courts will improve the satisfaction of all parties in a case; particularly, cases that involve Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic (BAME) parties. Recent evidence implies that the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 has not yet achieved the desired impact in making the judiciary more diverse however through a comparative lens the reforms have made a colossal effort to tackle the problem compared to ten years

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