He hasn’t made a ton of picks so far, but it looks like President Obama’s early judicial nominations have a theme: diversity.
A new report from the Brookings Institution found that just 30% of Obama’s 56 nominees from his first 14 months have been white males, while 68 percent of George W. Bush’s fell into that category. Obama has also nominated proportionally more white women, African Americans, Hispanics and Asians.
Obama’s nominees are more likely to be sitting judges than were Bush’s -- 64% have been drawn from the bench, as opposed to 47% -- and his circuit court picks are four years older on average. But the study’s author, Brookings visiting fellow Russell Wheeler, is cautious about conclusions: “The numbers are small enough that you’ve got to be careful not to read more into it than is there.”
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