The percentage of women Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed to the bench in 2009 dropped to 27.8 percent from a full one-third of all appointees in 2008, according to numbers released by his administration on Friday.
The number of new judges who are Asian American (9.3 percent) and African American (9.3 percent) increased slightly over the same time period, however.
Those are just some of the findings in the governor’s annual report on the diversity of his judicial picks. The headache-inducing numbers instantly become fodder for those who say the governor is doing a great job at appointing more women and ethnic minorities (better percentages, generally, than State Bar demographics) and those who don’t (his appointees are far more white and male than California’s population).
The good news for the governor is that the number of applicants rose almost 15 percent in 2009. The pool of wannabe-judges included more Asian Americans, African American and Hispanics.
If that’s not enough, you can read about the latest demographics of the entire state court system, also released Friday by the Administrative Office of the Courts.
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