Minority Judges

Paper Summary:

The current American trend to seek diversity in its courts has seen the dramatic rise to judgeships of numerous minorities and women. The paper argues that despite this increase in judicial diversity, things have changed very little - no extremely liberal nor conservative ideology has slipped through the federal court system, nor have major headlining decisions been made by minority judges. Therefore, the question arises of how much of an impact do minority judges actually have. The previous assumption that having an African-American or Hispanic judge could cause a major difference in all levels of the judicial system may not necessarily be true. This paper conducts a careful examination of how justices who are African-American or Hispanic affect the judicial system. In order to clarify this issue, the paper analyzes the decisions made by African-American or Hispanic judges to assess whether or not they differ from the decisions of their colleagues.

From the Paper:

"Despite the supposed affect of African American or Hispanic judges on decisions that pertain to race, civil liberties or rights, in all other cases they are not much different from their colleagues. Professor Paul E. Tracy writes in his book "Decision Making and Juvenile Justice" that although it is commonly perceived that minority judges are more likely to be compassionate to the plight of criminals during sentencing, the assumption is false. Within cases of juvenile delinquency, minority judges tend to be much more severe on juvenile offenders than non minority judges."

More papers on Minority Judges:

• Term Paper # 121596 : "Minorities as Judges and Lawyers"
• Argumentative Essay # 103491 : "Minorities and the U.S. Judicial System"
• Essay # 84753 : "Racial Discrimination"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: