American Lawyer Media explores why the number of African-American judges in the Northern District of California has dropped. I closely follow the demographics of the legal profession and the general population here in California and part of the reason is because we have a different mix than other parts of the country. One might argue that the most massive gap between the citizenry and the make-up of the judiciary in California involves Latinos.
That graph is from slides that Judge Harbin-Forte presented at a State Bar symposium on diversity in the profession a few years back. It compares Latino population to the percentage of the state bar that is Latino. Judge Harbin-Foote is quoted in the article:
Judge Brenda Harbin-Forte of Alameda County Superior Court, a fierce advocate for more women and minorities in the judiciary, has tracked demographics on the state bench for more than a decade. She says the stakes are particularly high in federal court because of its broad jurisdiction to hear discrimination and civil rights cases.
"Everybody ought to be up in arms," she said. "We're at a crisis point now, and I am very, very concerned that pretty soon we will be the invisible judges."