2. But from a descriptive perspective, which is the purpose of this piece, it’s clear that the Biden administration prioritized diversity—and important to note that.
3. As I suggest near the end of that piece, that intense focus on diversity might be part of why Biden’s judges—so far at least—have not been as influential as Trump’s.
As president, he’s free to set his priorities. But they have definitely affected his judicial legacy.
It should be pointed out that Toby Heytens is a white guy, which maybe is a corollary of point 3 above: the white guys who made it through the Biden process must be pretty special given what he was focused on.
Whereas, the other implicit point of #3 and the original comment: if you focus on diversity to the extent that affirmative action was practiced in higher education at least until a couple years ago and at the level the Biden Admin seemed to focus on it for appointments (not just judicial but also other political appointees), the median appointee is going to be less impressive than if you just didn’t do that. So, it can’t really be a surprise that the Biden judges aren’t standing out.
Diversity? How about going back to merit?
1. Just to be clear, I personally am a big believer in merit. I assume you’ve read this piece of mine:
https://davidlat.substack.com/p/affirmative-action-is-going-down
2. But from a descriptive perspective, which is the purpose of this piece, it’s clear that the Biden administration prioritized diversity—and important to note that.
3. As I suggest near the end of that piece, that intense focus on diversity might be part of why Biden’s judges—so far at least—have not been as influential as Trump’s.
As president, he’s free to set his priorities. But they have definitely affected his judicial legacy.
It should be pointed out that Toby Heytens is a white guy, which maybe is a corollary of point 3 above: the white guys who made it through the Biden process must be pretty special given what he was focused on.
Whereas, the other implicit point of #3 and the original comment: if you focus on diversity to the extent that affirmative action was practiced in higher education at least until a couple years ago and at the level the Biden Admin seemed to focus on it for appointments (not just judicial but also other political appointees), the median appointee is going to be less impressive than if you just didn’t do that. So, it can’t really be a surprise that the Biden judges aren’t standing out.
Surprised by the suggestion that Biden would want his appointees to "garner headlines" in the way that Judge Ho does