A partially justified(?) celebration of "Diversity on the federal bench"

Carl Tobias has this new op-ed in the National Law Journal, which is headlined "Diversity on the federal bench: The Obama administration deserves credit for nominating large numbers and percentages of highly qualified, diverse candidates."  Here is a snippet:

Obama has adopted measures that will increase ethnic and gender diversity, as manifested in his judicial nominations to date.  Justice Sonia Sotomayor is the classic example.  Moreover, his 10 appeals court nominees include three African-Americans, one Asian-American and four women, while his 10 district court nominees include four African-Americans, three Asian-Americans, one Latino and four women.

Two African-American circuit nominees, highly regarded sitting district judges Andre Davis and Joseph Greenaway, earned well-qualified American Bar Association ratings, the organization's highest ranking.  The third, well-respected Rhode Island Superior Court Associate Justice O. Rogeriee Thompson, was nominated last week and has yet to receive an ABA ranking.  The four Asian-American nominees would increase by 36% the number of Asian-American judges.  They include Southern District of New York Judge Denny Chin, who would be the first Asian-American judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2d Circuit; California Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Nguyen, who would be the first Vietnamese-American district judge; and Magistrate Judge Edward Chen, who would be the first Asian-American member of the Northern District of California. 

I share the sentiment that President Obama should be credited for impressive ethnic and gender diversity in his early judicial nominations.  But, as this brief snippet highlights, the Obama nominees are remarkable for a profound lack of diversity concerning their pre-nomination positions: nearly all of Obama's federal judicial nominees have involved persons who are already judges.

As I have said in prior posts, I suspect that Obama's remarkable affinity for nominating persons who are already judges to the federal bench is mostly a reflections of his Administration's interest in playing matters relatively safe with early judicial nominees.  Nevertheless, I hope before too long that the chief criteria being used for selecting Obama judicial nominees soon extends beyond the apparent requirement that the prosepctive nominee is already a judge.

Some related new and old posts:

• Should President Obama be praised or assailed for his approach to judicial nominations so far?
• Seeking thoughts on a "professional judiciary" for sentencing law
• Judge Gerard Lynch becomes first lower-court Obama nominee confirmed by Senate
• "Obama moving slowly on judges"
• Should President Obama practice ageism when making judicial nominations?
• Noticing the biggest bias in the federal judiciary
• How a new administration is likely to impact federal sentencing practice
• Why federal sentencing reformers must focus on the USSC and lower courts
• Judging, politics, sentencing and elections
• A modest(?) proposal for filling the bench from the ivory tower
• Urging President-elect Obama to elevate district judges to the circuit courts