Speech by Judge Cordella Bart-Stewart OBE, chair of the UKABJ steering group, as guest of honour at New College Oxford Law Society Annual Dinner on 25 April 2026:
It is a great honour to have been invited as your guest this evening, someone
from a very different background to the people usually seen in these spaces.
I was born in Jamaica and came to England as a British child to join my
parents who like others of that Caribbean generation planned a temporary
stay. Many had a 5 year plan but they found life tougher than they thought it
would be and it was not easy to save the money to return home.
I knew from my teens that I wanted to be a lawyer but experiences of racism,
projected low expectations, and being told by an immigration officer that as
I was born in Jamaica I could never be British, meant that I too hoped to
leave.
I left school intending to seek employment as a trainee legal executive and
work my way up to qualification as a solicitor. In the event I passed my A
levels but had no idea how to apply to university so went to the nearest
polytechnic. I always wanted my own practice. Unusually for a small high
street firm I was able flick between commercial work, a lot of civil including
defamation, including winning damages for my client from national tabloids,
appeals to the Privy Council and private law. I found myself unintentionally
specialising in immigration and family and sitting as a part time immigration
and asylum judge alongside running my practice.
I am often challenged by others with the view that diversity does not matter.
Why would the race or gender of a judge make any difference? After all, the
role of a judge is simply to apply the law fairly and impartially to resolve
disputes.
I spend a lot of free time reading the work of opinion writers across a range
of newspapers and magazines as asylum and human rights judges are
expected to be up to date with world affairs. A recent article in the New York
Times helped me decide to speak about that question this evening.
It is a guest opinion essay titled “Samuel Alito’s Princeton Is Not Sonia
Sotomayor’s” by Peter S. Canellos, the author of a forthcoming book
“Revenge for the Sixties: Sam Alito and the Triumph of the Conservative
Legal Movement.”
It begins “Personal history is often the subconscious grist of judicial
decision-making” and makes a broader argument about how personal
experience—especially formative environments like college—can quietly
shape the thinking of judges who later make nationally significant decisions.
As much as we like to say otherwise and may really believe, can judges as
human beings, be purely neutral actors?
What is interesting about the article is that both of these current United
States Supreme Court Judges attended Princeton University within a few
years of each other. Justice Sotomayor went up as Justice Alito had just
graduated, but they did so in very different contexts.
Justice Alito came from a modest background, had attended public school
and it is reported that he felt out of place socially. America at that time was
a period of intense political and cultural unrest. He was uncomfortable with
this and in his case the period solidified his more traditional, conservative
outlook.
Justice Sotomayor, a Latina woman arriving in 1972, the fourth year in which
women were first admitted to Princeton, was also from a working class
background, but she saw herself as part of a broader movement for racial
and social change.
Both Judges are said to have referenced smart privileged people that they
came across on campus but for Justice Alito his focus was what he
considered “responsible behaviour” and he harked back to “ the good sense
and decency of the people back in his own community”.
During his time the administration hoped to diversify the student body along
racial and, more urgently, gender lines and Alito was part of the last of over
200 years of all-male intakes.
He apparently described his time at Princeton as a time of turmoil. He
wanted to protect the social and religious values that marked his upbringing.
However, Justice Sotomayor saw herself as part of a broader movement for
racial and social change.
Both found their tribes at University. But they seem to have been polar
opposite tribes and the author argues that their contrasting campus experiences shaped how each justice sees the world—and, by extension, how they interpret the law.
In the case of Justice Alito, the author goes further and suggests that as he
rose to the Supreme Court, Justice Alito’s views sometimes stood in
opposition to the kinds of social changes and diversity that Princeton
increasingly came to represent.
The argument is that the seeds of major judicial philosophies are often
planted early and in the US we see the national consequences visibly
played out.
While judges are expected to be neutral, the author points to a real tension:
their backgrounds, values, and experiences can influence how they interpret
the law—especially in difficult or ambiguous cases. In higher courts, like the
Supreme Court of the United States, this role becomes especially powerful
because interpretations can shape national policy.
This can also be said of our appellate courts. Judges don’t just decide the
one case—they often create precedents and those decisions guide future
cases.
So while we think of a judge as an impartial interpreter of the law, I believe
that in practice, they are (for now) a human decision-maker whose
perspective can shape legal outcomes. Also, in the absence of a written
constitution, we might say that broad principles like “liberty” or “equal
protection” should adapt as society’s understanding of those ideas grows.
This can lead to very different outcomes in the same case, especially on
issues such as privacy rights, free speech and diversity, equality and
inclusion.
In some societies we see pushback arising from the claim or fear of judges
having too much power. I mention this article as I think, by using examples
of 2 judges who sit on the same panel it articulates well that their early life
experience made a very significant difference to how they can interpret the
same set of facts. I think it also illustrates the importance of representation
and inclusion at every level of the judiciary as the great majority of cases
never reach even the High Court.
Having studied at a former polytechnic in the 70’s when higher education
was being opened up to a wider section of the population, as a child who
grew up seeing on television and reading about the civil rights movement,
independence movements in former colonies and student protests around
the world, I saw Law as a practical tool for social progress rather than a lofty
academic pursuit.
Establishing my own practice gave me freedom to choose my work and
clients. The Black Solicitors Network was set up to address blocked access
and progression as well as disadvantage for a very visible minority. The Black
working age population is 4.4%, That figure is much higher in London and
other major cities. However, only 1.3% of court judges are recorded as of
Black ethnicity and 1.7% of tribunal judges. Only a handful of Circuit Judges
and one recently appointed High Court Judge are Black.
So going back to that original question, “Why would the race or gender of the
judge make any difference?”. I was asked this live on BBC radio filming at the
Supreme Court on the anniversary of the first year in the new building. The
colour of a person’s skin or their gender in itself should not make a
difference to the outcome of a case but it brings to the bench a visible
expression of different lived experiences and is a tangible expression of
inclusion that I believe is necessary in a stable, cohesive society.
Representation is not about ticking a box. It is about legitimacy and public
trust in institutions particularly one with so much power over people’s daily
lives. Justice being seen—not only to be done—but to be done by a judiciary
that reflects the diversity, talent, and lived realities of the society it serves.
And those lived realities matter. We want to see Judges moving alongside
their communities, explaining the law and their decisions in language the
public understand. The Association aims to strengthen the profession by
making it more representative and transparent, shaping and informing
decision made with the breadth of our experience and values. It also says to
underrepresented groups, you belong and are heard. So in conclusion. Yes.
a diverse and inclusive judiciary really does matter.