The Connecticut General Assembly recently passed — and the governor signed into law– H.B. 7041, which, among other things, increases the transparency of the state judicial selection process by requiring reports of the professional backgrounds of all applicants for judgeships and those approved by the Judicial Selection Commission.

By requiring these reports, Connecticut continues to lead the way in judicial nominations transparency and providing policymakers with the information they need to ensure that people’s champions have a path to the state bench. 

Today, lawyers who have represented actual people rather than powerful entities, like corporations or the state, are much less likely to be tapped for judicial nominations than their corporate and prosecutorial peers. In a way, bias in judicial nominations is not a new problem. Until relatively recently, it was common for Connecticut governors to nominate slates of dozens of state court judges without any racial minorities and very few women.

Now however, the gender ratio of state court judges is approximately equal to that of the population, and Connecticut has one of the most racially diverse benches in the nation. So what changed, and how can we apply the lessons of this turnaround to other shortcomings of the state judiciary? Commitments to diversity from governors and other stakeholders were important, but a key –and often overlooked– component was increasing the transparency of the judicial selection process.

While some portion of the increase in demographic diversity among judges may reflect a slight shift in that direction nationwide, law still remains one of the least diverse professions in the country. Rather, in Connecticut, the last two administrations have made explicit efforts to increase the demographic diversity of their judicial nominees, assisted by the strongest judicial selection demographics reporting requirements in the country.

Judicial applicant confidentiality is important, but not long after forming the JSC to screen judicial applicants for selection by the governor, the General Assembly recognized that without some kind of window into the JSC’s decisions, there would be significant opportunity for bias to prevent candidates from certain backgrounds from making it through the system.

Now, every year, the JSC is required to report anonymized demographic data on judicial applicants, including race, gender, religion, and time in legal practice. In addition to providing these data for applicants, the Commission must also report the same for approved applicants. Seeing an overwhelming white and male bench in the 1980s, the legislature set up a system where comparing the demographics of these two groups can identify whether a lack of diversity is due to a lack of diversity in applicants or if there is a systemic issue keeping them from passing through the JSC.

This system is not perfect, and significant effort is still needed to increase the transparency of the selection process and allow for greater public participation, but the JSC’s reporting requirements have allowed the government and advocates to analyze its work and address systemic issues. Today, further transparency is needed–not around demographic but professional diversity.

Connecticut’s bench is currently dominated by former prosecutors and corporate attorneys. Empirical studies, including one of the Connecticut judiciary, have found that these are the very backgrounds that more often side with powerful entities like corporations and the state over ordinary people. From housing court to discrimination claims to criminal sentencing, people facing off against a corporation or the state are significantly more likely to lose their cases if they appear before a former prosecutor or corporate attorney.

Unlike former prosecutors and corporate attorneys, public interest attorneys with backgrounds representing the people rather than the powerful are significantly underrepresented among Connecticut judges. While there has been some improvement on this front over the last two years, encouraged particularly by the CT Pro-People Judiciary Coalition, public interest attorneys like public defenders, legal aid, civil rights, and labor lawyers remain a small minority on the state bench. For example, the Connecticut Supreme Court only has one justice who regularly represented people before becoming a judge (and he is the justice who sides most often with people compared with his peers who side more often with their own former corporate and state employers). Aside from the short-term appointment of Justice Christine Keller, who spent part of her career in legal aid, all of Gov. Ned Lamont’s high court nominees have had corporate and/or prosecutorial backgrounds.

So what is the cause of this problem? According to the Governor’s Office, the main reason is that not enough public interest lawyers apply to be judges in the first place. This may be true to at least some extent, but the Pro-People Judiciary Coalition is aware of a number of public interest attorneys who have been on the approved candidate list for years without being nominated. Other public interest attorneys report being accused by some JSC members of a lack of objectivity because of their chosen fields. To address these discrepancies and help determine effective methods of increasing the representation of lawyers for the people on the bench, the coalition proposed a simple addition to the JSC’s reporting requirements: the professional backgrounds of all applicants and approved candidates.

This proposal was included in this session’s H.B. 7041, which contained several other changes to the JSC, some of which we supported and some we did not. But the JSC reporting amendment included in H.B. 7041 represents a modest but meaningful step toward a judiciary that better reflects the full range of legal experience in Connecticut—and, by extension, improves the outcomes for ordinary people appearing in our courts.

Just as demographic transparency helped open the door for more diverse candidates to reach the bench, transparency around professional background can ensure that those who have spent their careers representing everyday people, not just the powerful, are given a fair shot. This bill will not only strengthen public confidence in the judicial system but also affirm Connecticut’s commitment to a fairer, more inclusive judiciary.

Connecticut is leading the way on a more open judicial selection process, and all states with judicial nominations should take a close look at following Connecticut’s lead.

Steve Kennedy is Organizing Director of the People’s Parity Project.