IN NINE OF 11 Southern states, President George Bush has never nominated a black person for any of 62 openings for federal trial court judgeships, according to federal court data. In his home state of Texas, the president has not nominated a single black judge to the federal bench in 18 nominations sent to the Senate during the past six years, according to Leslie Proll, director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc.’s Washington office.
The lack of new black judges on Southern courts underlines the fact that many of the black judges serving in the region were appointed years ago and are approaching retirement. Some black lawyers worry that as a result, a new generation of Southern lawyers may never see a black judge on the federal bench. Mississippi and Alabama have not had a black judge appointed in more than 20 years, a situation that Proll calls “very egregious. So many of the Carter judges are leaving the court through death or retirement. Generations are changing on the bench, and nobody is following them,” she says.
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