ABSTRACT
A central issue for our research was the extent to which those who had applied, or considered doing so, felt confident that selection was based solely on merit. The answer to this question was not straightforward. On the one hand, the responses generally indicated approval of the quality of recent judicial appointments made, particularly at the higher levels, and there was no suggestion that incompetent candidates were being appointed for extraneous reasons. On the other hand, the research revealed a strong body of opinion critical of the indirectly discriminatory effects on those from groups who have not traditionally been included in the judicial recruitment pool. These different perspectives can be reconciled by the argument that, while the system ensures that those it appoints are chosen on merit, it does not necessarily guarantee that all those who are equally well qualified have the same prospects of selection. In other words, there is not a level playing field on which high quality applicants from different backgrounds can compete equally, so that applicants from certain groups were at an advantage. In the words of one female solicitor: ‘It probably goes male members of the Bar top, women members of the Bar, male solicitors, women solicitors – that’s probably the pecking order.’
