Documenting the change in religious diversity on US federal courts over 200 years

Authors Lanier et al. demonstrated the change in religious affiliation among US federal court judges, from being 90 percent Protestant for most of the country’s history, to becoming more diverse in the 20th century. They analyzed descriptive data about justices who served on the US Supreme Court, US District Courts, and US Courts of Appeals, going back 200 years. For the latter two types of court  justices, Lanier et al. used the NACJD datasets, Multi-User Database on the Attributes of United States District Court Judges, 1801-2000 and Multi-User Database on the Attributes of United States Appeals Court Judges, 1801-2000. They contain the judges’ religious affiliations, as well as information about their personal, social, economic, career, and political attributes. Lanier et al. also found that the gradual shift to more judicial diversity was not inevitable. Specific political events and presidential decisions contributed to it, for instance, President Wilson’s 1916 appointment of Justice Brandeis, who was Jewish. Although contentious, his appointment signaled that “increasing religious diversity in the federal courts was not just possible, but probable.”