Keir Monteith KC, founding chair of the Criminal Bar Association's new Black Barristers' Committee, asked how there is still no black judge in the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court, and called on chambers, law firms and judges to act.
The absence of a single black judge in the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court is not good enough, the founding chair of a new criminal bar committee has said, the Law Society Gazette reports. Keir Monteith KC of Garden Court Chambers spoke to 350 people at the official launch of the Criminal Bar Association's Black Barristers' Committee in central London on Friday evening. Guests included Lady Justice Whipple, the lead judge for diversity and inclusion, and representatives of the Judicial Appointments Commission.
"How on earth, with all the black excellence in this room and going back over time, do we not have a single black Court of Appeal judge?" Monteith asked. He said that despite diversity and inclusion strategies, training and reform of the Judicial Appointments Commission, the percentage of black Crown Court judges "stubbornly stays at 1%", and that the reason was "institutional. A structural problem." Australasian Lawyer notes that justice ministry statistics published last year showed the proportion of black judges had stagnated at 1 percent since 2015.
Monteith said the committee needed allyship from other parts of the system, citing the support of immediate past CBA president Riel Karmy-Jones KC, and added: "But it cannot be all on us." He called on chambers and law firms to review their recruitment, retention and work allocation policies, on advocates to call out racial bias in court submissions and on judges to call it out in judgments.
Guest speaker Shami Chakrabarti, former director of Liberty and now a Labour peer, said there had never been a person of colour in the highest court. "For us to be in 2026 and never have had a law lord or Supreme Court judge of colour – it is not good enough for me," she said, adding that diverse perspectives at the top of the judiciary matter for public trust and legitimacy.
