The Fleeting Benefits of Appointments Commissions for Judicial Gender Equity

Parity in gender representation on the bench is crucial if the judiciary is to reflect the population it serves. This paper determines whether judicial appointments commissions, recently adopted in the UK, have made UK courts more diverse and whether they could increase judicial diversity in other commonwealth countries. I argue that while the appointment of women judges increased in the first year after appointment commissions were established in the UK, any increase in the gender equity of appointments vanished soon thereafter. Had UK-style commissions been implemented in Australia or New Zealand, the number of appointed women might have increased in the first year after the commissions were established, but that increase would not have been sustained in the long-term.