When 80-20 said, "When compared with other
Americans in the legal profession, an AsAm has 1/6 the chance to
be appointed a Federal judge," even some 80-20 supporters
couldn't believe it!
"A 6 to 1 disparity? I don't believe it ," some reacted. Here are
two such emails. They questioned:
"But is that because we are being unfairly treated
or because Asians do not choose the legal profession as
much as other professions such as engineering and medicine?"
W. Cheng
"I find this very curious … How do Asian Americans compare to
other Americans and other races when equalizing for law school
graduates or for lower court judges? ... " xxx Kagawa
The truth is that AsAms are treated even worse, when the above
mentioned factors are taken into consideration.
Here are the detailed accounts of these statistics,
and their sources. The info. was provided by Federal
District Judge Denny Chin of New York:
"Mr. Woo: I wanted to share some information with you. You may
know most of this, but you probably don't have the details.
There currently are only six active Asian-American Article III
federal judges in the country. All are trial judges, and there are
no active Asian-American judges in the federal appellate courts.
(Judge Tashima in the Ninth Circuit is on senior status.) Unless
there are new appointments, when Judge Ron Lew takes senior status
later this year, we will be down to five Asian-American Article III
judges. When I was appointed in 1994, I was the only Asian-American
Article III judge outside the Ninth Circuit. Today, eleven years
later, I am still the only one outside the Ninth Circuit.
Other minority groups fair much better. The most recent available
statistics show that, as of September 30, 2004, for Article III
federal judges, 0.7% were Asian (6), 10.7% were African-American
(88), and 6.5% were Hispanic (54). These numbers are for active
judges and do not include judges on senior status. (See Adm. Office
of U.S. Courts, Judiciary Fair Employment Practices, Annual Report
10/1/03-9/30/04, at 35).
Hence there are some 15 times as many African-American federal
judges and almost 10 times as many Hispanic federal judges as there
are Asian-American federal judges.
In contrast, there are more Asian-American "legal professionals" at
law firms of 100 or more employees, as of 2002, than there are
African-American or Hispanic professionals. This is drawn from a
2003 EEOC report :
http://www.eeoc.gov/stats/reports/diversitylaw/index.html. The
numbers are: 5.3% Asian-American, 4.4% African American, and 2.9%
Hispanic. In this context, "legal professionals" are predominantly
lawyers but include other professional employees, such as non-
lawyer accountants.
In addition, the 2000 Census shows that for lawyers, 2.3% were
Asians, 3.9% were African-American, and 3.3% were Hispanic. See
http://www.abanet.org/minorities/links/2000census.html .
Of course, these numbers are now five years old, and I would guess
that there are even more Asian lawyers today, on a percentage
basis.
The numbers are appalling -- there are a grossly disproportion-
ately low number of Asian-American Article III federal judges.
So the efforts of you and your group in this respect are most
welcome.
DC (DC stands for Denny Chin)"
Are you mad as hell? Are you convinced that AsAms
must build our own GROUP political clout?
Join 80-80. Using a credit card,
http://www.80-20initiative.net/membership.html (easy to use) or
http://www.80-20initiative.net/paypal.html
PERSONAL checks are payable to "80-20 PAC", mailed to:
Jing-Li Yu Director of Projects
P.O. Box 527340 Flushing, NY 11352-7340 .
Write down your E-MAIL address & PHONE no. on the BACK of the
check. Life membership is $1,000; Family (2 voters) is $50; Basic
Membership is $35; Student membership is $15.