Colm O’Cinneide and Kate Malleson: Are quotas for judicial appointments lawful under EU law? – UK Constitutional Law Association
‘In April 2014 Sadiq Khan, Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, asked Karon Monaghan QC and Geoffrey Bindman QC to review the options for a future Labour Government to improve diversity in the judiciary. On November 6th their report, entitled “Judicial Diversity: Accelerating change”, was published. Starting from the premise that “[t]he near absence of women and Black, Asian and minority ethnic judges in the senior judiciary is no longer tolerable”, it proposes a range of recommendations designed to speed up the glacial pace of change. Perhaps the most controversial of these is for the introduction of a quota system for women and BAME candidates. The report reviews the use of quotas in other UK institutions as well as their use in judicial appointments processes around the world, before addressing the question of whether such quotas would be lawful under EU law. This is a key question: EU law casts a long shadow in this context, as the Monaghan and Bindman report makes clear, given that any legislation enacted in Westminster to give effect to a quota system in the process of judicial appointments must conform to the requirements of EU law.’
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UK Constitutional Law Association, 12th November 2014
Source: www.ukconstitutionallaw.org
