The Black Judges

Twenty years ago an organizational meeting of the nation's black judges could have been held in the back of a single bus. Today it would take a small fleet of Greyhounds. To celebrate that growth, and what it means to the administration of justice, half of the nation's 269 black judges met in Atlanta this month to establish the Judicial Council of the predominantly black National Bar Association.

The event was more than ceremonial. Black judges know that they have become a force in the legal community, and they mean to make the most of it. Specifically, they want the white-dominated judicial system to become more responsive to blacks and to the poor, and they are not at all reticent with their suggestions for bringing that about.

Defendant's Language. Jury selection is one of their special concerns. Said Baltimore Judge Joseph C. Howard: "We found there were professional [white] jurors serving six and eight times a year." As a result of Howard's prodding, black representation on petit juries in Baltimore has moved from 5% to 50%. Judge Howard and three black colleagues have also led a movement to reform the bail system. Today three times as many Baltimore defendants are released on their own recognizance as three years ago, when Howard was sworn in.

The right to counsel has been guaranteed by the Supreme Court, said Philadelphia Judge Robert N.C. Nix Jr. "But it's the judges' responsibility to make sure it is effective counsel." That may mean assigning a black lawyer to defend a black suspect so that the attorney "speaks the defendant's language."

Many of the judges at Atlanta went a step further. They argued in some cases a black defendant needs the sensitivity of a black judge to get a fair trial. "If I get a probation report that a fellow has been in a gang," said U.S. District Judge A. Leon Higginbotham of Philadelphia, "I may know something that the white judge doesn't: that almost everybody in that neighborhood has to be in a gang to get to school safely." The black jurists feel that they must educate their white counterparts in such matters.

Some of the arguments outlined in Atlanta are vulnerable to the charge of reverse racism, but the black judges did not seem concerned. Said New York University Law Professor Leroy Clark: "They're not giving preferential treatment or dealing in 'black law'; they're just getting things to where the black man gets the same justice that the white guy gets in the first place." A number of the judges also argued that they were concerned with class discrimination against the poor, not racial problems alone.

To become fully effective, the black judges feel that they must not only enlarge their numbers, but also get high bench appointments. Aside from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and a handful of appellate court jurists, blacks generally operate at the lowest level--the local small-claims and police courts. In Atlanta, they agreed to a man that their most pressing future business was to lobby for more blacks on the federal bench. Representatives of the new Judicial Council hope to meet with President Nixon soon to take up the problem. They have a strong argument: none of the President's 16 appointments to the federal bench in the South was a black man.

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