Maia Nehme, Staff Reporter

A coalition of state and national organizations is calling for greater racial, gender and professional diversity on Connecticut’s courts — starting with the state Supreme Court’s next chief justice. 

Richard Robinson, the first Black chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, will retire this  September. One month out, Governor Ned Lamont has not yet announced Robinson’s replacement. In that silence, nearly a dozen advocacy groups — composed of attorneys, law students and legal scholars — urged Lamont to appoint a woman of color from an underrepresented legal background to the court in an August letter.

According to Steve Kennedy, the organizing and network director of the People’s Parity Project, the myth of the always objective judge obscures the need for judges of a diverse legal background. The PPP, which spearheaded efforts to write the letter, is a nonprofit striving for a legal system that empowers working people.  

“Empirical study after study shows that these judges are people,” Kennedy said. “They bring their prior experiences to the cases that they hear. And I think the only way we can get to something that looks more like justice for everybody is to acknowledge that nobody can be objective and to make sure that we have judges that reflect as many backgrounds as possible.”

An April 2022 PPP report found over half of judges across Connecticut’s courts came from a corporate attorney or criminal prosecutor background. By contrast, judges with “pro-people” legal backgrounds — an umbrella term coined by the PPP that includes legal aid lawyers, public defenders and all other attorneys that represent individuals — make up less than a fifth of the state judiciary. 

Former corporate lawyers and prosecutors were about half as likely as other judges to rule in favor of workers in employment cases in the U.S., according to a 2021 paper by legal scholar Joanna Shepherd. Shepherd’s study is one of multiple corroborating Kennedy’s claim that judges’ professional backgrounds influence their rulings. 

While PPP has mainly advocated for greater professional diversity on Connecticut’s courts since its 2022 study, Robinson’s forthcoming retirement prompted the nonprofit to partner with other organizations focused on strengthening racial and gender diversity.

Forty-two percent of Connecticut’s judges are women and 37 percent are people of color, according to figures from 2022 and 2023, respectively. Yet James Bhandary-Alexander, a lecturer and legal scholar at Yale Law School, emphasized that this racial and gender diversity is a recent change.

“If you look at who’s been allowed to be a judge from the time when there have been judges in Connecticut until the present day… it would be completely dominated by white men,” he said. 

Though the coalition’s letter acknowledges the recent increase in demographic diversity, it notes that Connecticut is still lacking some historic firsts, such as appointing a Black woman to the state Supreme Court. 

Tom Wright, director of strategic engagement for the American Constitution Society, one of the organizations that wrote the letter, underscored both demographic and professional diversity’s role in boosting public confidence in the justice system.

“[When courts] do not reflect the diversity of the people they serve and our nation at large, the credibility in our justice system suffers,” Wright wrote to the News. “A diverse bench not only enhances the legitimacy of our legal decisions but also contributes to a broader understanding of the complex issues facing our society.” 

A limited path to success 

While Lamont hasn’t publicly responded to the coalition’s letter, Kennedy believes the governor has heeded advocates’ requests for more demographic diversity in recent years. 

Fifty-nine percent of the recent nominees to the state Superior Court are women and over a third are people of color.

Professional diversity has lagged behind demographic diversity — for example, less than a fifth of the recent state Superior Court nominees came from “pro-people” legal backgrounds. 

But Kennedy said Lamont and his staff have been receptive to advocates’ calls for more “pro-people” judges. The PPP met with the state’s General Counsel Natalie Braswell earlier this year to discuss professional diversity on the courts and passed along their recommendations for Robinson’s replacement to Braswell via email.

David Bednarz, a spokesperson for Lamont, declined to comment on whether the coalition’s letter would influence the governor’s nomination.

“Pro-people” lawyers still face high barriers to entry when seeking a judicial role, according to Bhandary-Alexander, who worked as a legal aid lawyer before teaching at Yale Law School. When he appeared before the state Judicial Selection Commission several years ago, he recalled getting asked pointed questions about whether his professional background would limit his objectivity as a judge. 

“It was an eye-opening experience to face all of these questions, which basically boiled down to questioning whether someone… with my background could be objective in cases involving poor people,” Bhandary-Alexander said.

Other “pro-people” attorneys that appeared before the Judicial Selection Commission described similar experiences, Kennedy said. Katie Agati, manager of operations for the Judicial Selection Commission, declined to comment on Bhandary-Alexander’s and Kennedy’s claims of targeted treatment of “pro-people” attorneys.

Bhandary-Alexander worries Lamont may opt for either demographic or professional diversity, rather than selecting a candidate with both. 

“Why can’t it be both? Why shouldn’t it be both?” he said. “[Some] people can’t conceive that, of course, there are people that embody different types of diversity who would be perfect candidates for the Connecticut Supreme Court.”

Robinson was appointed as chief justice of the state Supreme Court in 2018.