Sonia Sotomayor and Diversity on the Federal Bench - washingtonpost.com: ...Diversity on the federal bench is relatively low, though it's increasing. Sotomayor is part of a pattern among judges nominated by recent presidents, both Democratic and Republican, according to Russell Wheeler, a scholar at the Brookings Institution.
'Sotomayor has been part of three trends since the 1950s -- an increase in the proportion of women and in members of racial and ethnic minorities and a decrease in the proportion of district judges appointed, as was she, from among private lawyers,' Wheeler wrote in a new report, 'The Changing Face of the Federal Judiciary."
