If you want to know which groups of people have the most problems in this society, go to court. There are depressingly familiar patterns. Young people with low literacy or drug dependency accused of crime, families in crisis disputing whether their children should be taken away, employees claiming discrimination based on race, gender or disability. Litigation and diversity – usually for all the wrong reasons – go hand in hand.
Strangely, if you want to know which group of people are the most advantaged, also go to court. Except this time, look at the bench. The learned judges presiding over these messy situations are disproportionately middle-class, Oxbridge-educated, white, male. If some of them are gay or bisexual, or suffer from a disability, then it's a fact they have largely kept to themselves.
Although overall levels of judicial diversity may not at first glance seem drastic – 4% of judges are from minorities and 19% are women – it gets worse the higher you climb. It's impossible to ignore the fact that there are no minority judges and only one woman on the supreme court. Levels at the court of appeal and high court are also dismal.
Don't take my word for it – this fact has been reproduced time after time by countless studies, reports and inquiries, the latest of which was delivered today by Lady Neuberger. The government has leapt on board, as have the three branches of the legal profession – each of which have been grappling with this in their own way.
So we are likely to see – between now and 2020 – positive action (for those who are prone to panic at the thought of "affirmative action", don't – it's only between candidates of equal merit), a greater use of appraisals and more creative thinking about the kind of experience that can satisfy judicial criteria.
It's great that the branches of state are all so keen to reverse this imbalance. Unlike the US, where Obama's appointment of Latina judge Sonia Sotomayor was weirdly divisive, the concept of appointing minority judges because they bring different perspectives to legal disputes is the subject of wide consensus in the UK.
What's really ironic is that this enthusiasm from judges, politicians and peers was communicated this morning to a group of correspondents from major newspapers and specialist publications, handpicked to deliver forth this important message about diversity to the general public. What did they look like? White males, every single one.
