ABSTRACT
Thirty years ago, the judiciary in England and Wales was largely an anonymous body made up almost exclusively of elderly white men who were appointed solely on their intellectual and legal skills and their ability to stay out of politics and avoid any taint of scandal. The idea that their values and beliefs had relevance to their decision making, or that they ought to be demographically reflective of society, was heretical to all but a few academics.1 The growth of judicial review, European Community law and, more recently, devolution and the Human Rights Act 1998 have brought about a attitudinal shift in the way we view the judiciary.2 The argument that judging, particularly in the higher courts, is a non-political activity is now acknowledged by commentators, lawyers and the judges themselves as a fairy tale. As a result, questions of judicial accountability and representativeness are now on the political agenda. Some of the issues raised, such as how to strike the right balance between accountability and judicial independence, are complex and problematic; they give rise to a range of legitimately held differences of opinion. One area, however, in which there is a clear consensus, is the desirability of greater diversity in the composition of the judiciary. This is supported for a variety of reasons: to increase public confidence in the judiciary; to improve the sensitivity of judicial decision making; to enhance the democratic legitimacy of the judges; or for simple reasons of equity. Whatever the rationale for promoting this change, there are few who would claim that the question of who are the judges is an irrelevant one. Nor are these trends unique to England and Wales. They are mirrored in many other countries, most particularly, but not exclusively, in common law jurisdictions. The awareness that increasing judicial power is held in the hands of strikingly homogeneous elites has attracted growing and widespread public comment and criticism.
