Judicial Diversity Reception

The School of Law will hold a reception to celebrate the Judicial Diversity Initiative (JDI). The JDI’s mission is to promote the equal participation of women and men from a range of backgrounds.

Keynote Address by The Honourable Dame Laura Cox DBE on the theme of Judicial Diversity, Progress and Challenges.

On 15 November the School of Law will hold a reception to celebrate the Judicial Diversity Initiative (JDI).  The JDI’s mission is to promote the equal participation of women and men from a diverse range of backgrounds, experiences and identities in the judiciary of England and Wales by 2020.   

Serving as a forum for bringing together academics, practitioners, judges and policy-makers, JDI activities include recording and analysing official data on applications for judicial appointments and appointment decisions, maintaining an accessible site for a range of material on judicial diversity, promoting debate, responding to consultation papers, informing media debate and identifying effective mechanisms for raising judicial diversity.

For the last year the JDI website has been hosted by Leeds' School of Law which has funded its development.  During this time, we have seen significant progress towards diversification with the appointments of Lady Hale as President of the Supreme Court, Lady Justice Black to the Supreme Court, and Mrs Justice Asplin and Mr Justice Singh to the Court of Appeal - however, out the seven new appointments to the Court of Appeal, only one is a woman.

This mixed picture of progress but also persistent barriers to judicial diversity is the theme of a workshop with leading academics and practitioners which will precede the reception.

The theme will then be taken up in the keynote address which will open the reception, and which will be delivered by the Honourable Dame Laura Cox DBE, who is former judge of the High Court of England and Wales and an executive member of the Judicial Diversity Initiative.