Court room diversity

Women Judges More Favoured by Lawyers
Friday, 18 June 2010, 11:14 am Press Release: Law Fuel

Judicial Survey Shows Women Judges More Favoured by Lawyers And Justice Baragwanath comes out as the most popular

LawFuel.co.nz - A survey of barristers conducted by website publishers KiwisFirst, published by Vince Siemer, have shown that retiring Court of Appeal Judge David Baragwanath was the highest overall scorer at 9.1, with embattled Supreme Court Justice Bill Wilson pulling only 3.1 in last place in the survey.

Although lawyers were requested by the Law Society not to participate in the survey, it was evidently well patronised by those who wanted to express their views on the popularity of the senior judges.

Lawyers were asked to score each judge on a scale of 1 to 10 in four categories; knowledge of the law, intelligence, personal character and fairness - as well as provide relevant comments.
Though women comprise 21% of the judges surveyed, they captured half of the top ten spots and three of the top five in the overall rankings. The average rating for female judges was 7.75, compared to 7.50 for the men.

Male judges still scored, on average, higher in knowledge of the law and intelligence, but the women outranked the men on the 'perceived fairness and integrity' ranking. blew the men away on perceived fairness and integrity.

Mr Siever commented: "If Judith Potter J - a definite outlier in the survey - was removed, female judges on average were considered an astounding 28% fairer in their judicial approach than their male counterparts."

"The results from the survey also raised the disturbing possibility that the overall judicial pool is short on talent and that, with the possible exception of Sian Elias, the New Zealand Supreme Court is not the bastion for this scarce legal talent. There appears palpable fear by some lawyers responding that the Supreme Court is not as reliable as the Privy Council was."
He commented that there was little diversity in the court and that minorities are virtually unrepresented. "Comments were common that many judges act with overt bias on Crown cases" he said.

"These results strongly suggest that New Zealand consider re-evaluating the mechanism by which judges are appointed, promoted and monitored."