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84 Tenn. L. Rev. 247 (2016-2017)
The New Diversity Crisis in the Federal Judiciary

handle is hein.journals/tenn84 and id is 253 raw text is: THE NEW DIVERSITY CRISIS IN THE FEDERAL JUDICIARY JASON IULIANo* AND AVERY STEWARTt For much of its history, the federal judiciary was characterized by a complete lack of surface-level (i.e., demographic) diversity. Over the past fifty years, efforts to promote surface-level diversity have yielded significant gains and the modern judiciary now looks more like the citizenry it serves than it has at any other point in history. Although this particular diversity crisis has abated, a new one has taken shape. Today, deep-level diversity is at an all-time low. This type of diversity denotes those attributes that are non-demographic in nature. It includes characteristics such as work experience, values, attitudes, and educational background. Given the salience of educational background in recent Supreme Court nominations, we focus on this dimension. Based on more than two hundred years of data on the legal education of judges, our analysis reveals that graduates of a smaller and smaller number of law schools are capturing a larger and larger share of federal judgeships. This trend is emblematic of a broader decline in the judiciary's deep-level diversity and speaks to the emergence of a new diversity crisis. INTRODUCTION. ........................................... 248 I. REDEFINING DIVERSITY IN THE LAW............... ..... 251 A. Surface-Level .................................. 252 B. Deep-Level ............................. ..... 262 II. MEASURING SURFACE-LEVEL DIVERSITY ...... .......... 269 III. MEASURING DEEP-LEVEL DIVERSITY.............. ..... 274 A. Educational Background of Federal Judges.................. 275 1. Aggregate Data ................................ 278 2. Time-Series Data............................ 283 3. Representation Ratio... .................... 288 B. Educational Background of Law Clerks ....... ..... 292 1. Supreme Court................................. 295 * Jason luliano is an Associate Research Scholar at Yale Law School and a Ph.D. candidate in Politics, Princeton University. He received his J.D. from Harvard Law School. t Avery Stewart is a Global Business Services Consultant at IBM; She received her B.A. from Princeton University. We thank Dan Kahan, Madison Kilbride, Tim O'Neill, and Philip Pettit for valuable discussions relating to this project.

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