Backtracking on the bench
Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Suzanne V. DelVecchio looks at the challenge of eliminating gender and racial bias in judicial appointments the way she looks at dieting: Slack off just a little and you can erase a lot of progress in a short time.
Back on the bench after wrapping up a five-year term as chief justice last fall, DelVecchio is alarmed by the fact that women accounted for only three of Governor Mitt Romney's 19 judicial nominees in the last two years. The two minorities appointed were also men. Equally disconcerting, she says, is the assertion by a spokeswoman for the governor that a lack of qualified candidates accounts for the gender disparity.
''I don't agree that there aren't qualified women out there," DelVecchio says of the Romney administration's response to criticism from the Women's Bar Association of Massachusetts. ''If they aren't applying, you have to make a commitment to go get them. It's like dieting. You've got to be vigilant."
Of the state's 391 judges, 120 are women, among them such high-profile figures as Margaret Marshall, the chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. But halfway through his first term, Romney has amassed a record that threatens to recast the judiciary as the white male bastion it once was.
Ralph C. Martin II, a former Suffolk district attorney who just completed a term as chairman of the Judicial Nominating Commission, is no less disturbed by the numbers. ''Three? That is not enough. Of course it's not enough. But because he did not name them, does that presuppose that the JNC has not sent names of qualified women to the governor's office?" he asks, noting that the confidential process prevents him from being specific.
''I can tell you that there is a sensitivity among JNC members to promoting diversity, but you can only promote from the pool of candidates you have. We do not get a high proportion of women in the pipeline compared to men. I wish there were more and we have had discussions about how to attract more women."
It is not for lack of women in the legal profession. Four out of every 10 lawyers in the United States and half of all law school graduates are women, numbers that Joan A. Lukey, the former president of the Boston Bar Association and one of the city's most distinguished litigators, suspects are even higher in Massachusetts because of the presence of so many law schools.
''The numbers are inexplicable. Sexism on the commission does not explain it. There is no one with higher integrity than Ralph," she says of Martin, an African-American.
''There are women like me who do not want to be a judge but I would be astounded if there weren't a significant pool of good women interested."
Like other prominent female lawyers in Boston, Lukey says she has been surprised to see qualified women spurned by the process in the last two years. ''I was stunned when a woman, a brilliant lawyer, I wrote the strongest letter of recommendation for in my life, did not get past the first round," she says. ''She had recommendations from a federal judge she had clerked for and a trial lawyer with a national reputation and mine. She had impressive credentials. I have no way of knowing why." Because the JNC's deliberations are confidential, those who submit recommendations are not informed of the outcome.
The process has become even more closed under Romney, who eliminated four regional nominating commissions that former Governor William F. Weld had established to ensure that lawyers across the state could weigh in on local judicial candidates they knew best. Romney argued that such decentralization fostered personal favoritism and political cronyism.
So, what has the venture capitalist chief executive given us instead? A state judiciary that is looking more and more like the corporate boardrooms in which he prospered: white and male.
Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at mcnamara@globe.com.
