FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 5, 2024
Raleigh, NC—Today, the People’s Parity Project released “Imbalanced Justice: Massachusetts,” the most recent installment in a series of reports on professional diversity on state benches across the country. This new report examines the professional backgrounds of 114 judges on the appellate and superior courts in Massachusetts. The report finds that nearly half of those judges—including all seven justices on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Courts—had experience working as corporate lawyers before being appointed to the bench. Further, the report finds that 60% of judges surveyed have worked as prosecutors. Only a handful of judges worked as civil rights lawyers, public defenders, legal aid attorneys, or in other positions dedicated to serving the people, rather than powerful interests.
The report highlights how much control the governor has over the process of choosing judges in Massachusetts. Significantly, the Governor’s Council, an elected body designed to serve as a check on the governor’s appointment power, fails to adequately curb the chief executive’s power, as most Councilors nearly always votes to confirm the governor’s nominees. Recently, advocates in Massachusetts have begun to encourage people to demand a judiciary that includes judges with experience fighting for people, not just corporations or the state. The report, released today, identifies additional ways for the public to push for a more professionally diverse, more pro-people bench.
In response to the report’s findings, People’s Parity Project’s Executive Director Molly Coleman issued the following statement:
“Our legal system is supposed to serve those who are most in need of justice—workers, consumers, renters, and low-income people who are too often at the mercy of corporations and other powerful interests. In order to live up to that ideal, we need a bench filled with judges who have demonstrated their commitment to the people, not the powerful. Unfortunately, these findings show that, in Massachusetts, that is not the case.
“Fortunately, there’s something that can be done about it. The people of Massachusetts have the power to demand better judicial nominees, and even to fundamentally reform the judicial selection system if the governor refuses to heed those demands. We’ll be watching the remainder of Maura Healey’s term closely, and expect to see a new level of commitment to a professionally diverse bench moving forward.”
Additional resources:
- “Jobs, Judges, and Justice: The Relationship between Professional
- Diversity and Judicial Decisions,” by Joanna Shepherd
- “Impact of Judges Professional Backgrounds on Eviction Outcomes,” by Steve Kennedy and Grace Brunner
- “Imbalanced Justice: Arizona,” by Billy Corriher
- “Imbalanced Justice: Georgia,” by Billy Corriher
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People’s Parity Project is a movement of attorneys and law students organizing for a democratized legal system which values people over profits, builds the power of working people, and opposes subordination of any form. Together, we are dismantling a profession that upholds corporate power and building a legal system that is a force for justice and equity. Our work focuses on building power for working people in the civil legal system through organizing, policy innovation, political education, and solidarity. Learn more: www.peoplesparity.org/about.