Author: nataliapw

In my twelve weeks with Alliance for Justice, I have learned a lot about the United States’ judicial system—more than I ever thought I would know. As a result, I now have a deep appreciation for the people who are dedicating their careers to fighting for a fair and diverse judiciary, and a greater understanding of why our courts matter. You can read my thoughts on why young people should care about our state courts here. But as I wrap up my internship and reflect on the summer, my biggest takeaways have nothing to do with the U.S. judiciary. 

This summer reminded me that everyone has a story. Behind their LinkedIn profile, job description, and the lag on their Zoom screen is a really interesting human being. As an intern during a virtual summer, it was easy to go through each day only interacting with my team, plus maybe a quick (and sometimes awkward) nod to another staff member while we waited for a Zoom meeting to begin. As I came in knowing virtually nothing about the federal judiciary and having little interest in pursuing law (the likely trajectory of many AFJ interns) or a job related to the judicial branch, it was easy to convince myself that any connections I made outside of my team wouldn’t be valuable.

And yet, as the summer went on, I made sure to reach out to and connect with AFJ staff whose roles had nothing to do with mine, and this is where I found that I learned and grew the most. These conversations weren’t necessarily meant to advance my career or to “network.” Instead, I learned how people spend their time when they’re not thinking about work, what their families are like, and where their favorite places to travel are. Along the way, I learned a lot about being a more thoughtful adult and what kind of professional I hope to become. Connecting with people is what is most instinctive for humans; it’s how we make friends and mentors, how we find people we can rely on, and how we navigate the world. Being the new and less “experienced” employee at an organization makes it daunting to reach out to new people. But, it also means that each connection you make is that much more transformative.

If I could give a piece of advice to anyone pursuing a career in the nonprofit world, or in any profession, it would be to take every opportunity to connect with your colleagues. You never know what interesting stories you might learn or what kind of impact you may have on someone else.

Social justice work is also exhausting. Anyone who commits their time and energy to advocate for a more equitable world exposes themselves to the very worst of our society, often because they’ve been personally harmed by a system that has failed them. The only way to avoid complete burnout is to be in community with others. I feel grateful that my colleagues at AFJ were open and excited to be meeting me and answering my often endless spew of questions, and I am looking forward to working on more teams in the future—regardless of the field—that foster this same opportunity for connection.

As an undergraduate at Brandeis, and especially as an Anthropology and Gender Studies major, my classes focus on interrogating larger systems that influence our society and shape our relationships. In anthropology, we discuss the “possessive investment in whiteness,” which is an institutionalized frame of mind that empowers society to structure institutions and practices to benefit white people. The possessive investment in whiteness creates the false perception that being white is the norm. By creating an “us/them” dichotomy between white people and non-white people, the United States is able to exploit and harm non-white groups through deeply rooted systems of oppression.

We see the possessive investment in whiteness everywhere, from legacy admissions to the communities that bear the brunt of the climate crisis to the lack of Black and Latina women running Fortune 500 companies. All of these disparities are the result of social systems that directly benefit white people and harm non-white people. While I have always known these truths to some extent, I’d never been taught how to conceptualize them until now. Being able to name these systems of oppression has been instrumental in my understanding of Alliance for Justice’s (AFJ) work to diversify the state and federal judiciary. 

During my internship, I’ve come to understand that, like all aspects of our bureaucratic system, the judicial selection process is a prime example of a possessive investment in whiteness. Traditionally, nominees are judged in part based on their past experiences, whether it be as a lawyer, a local or state judge, past clerkships, or other jobs. Even when not explicitly named, peoples’ opportunities to obtain these different experiences are often dictated by race, class, and connections. If a prospective judge is able to gain these qualifications, they are recommended to the White House by U.S. senators, or occasionally U.S. congresspeople. However, only 23% of the current U.S. Congress is non-white, with Hispanics making up only 9% of the U.S. House and Asian American and Pacific Islanders making up only 3%, despite accounting for 19% and 6% of the U.S. population respectively. Once selected by the president (who, if we look at history, has been a white man forty-five out of forty-six times), nominees must sit before the Senate Judiciary Committee, a group selected from a senate body that has only had 11 black senators in its 230+ year history. Currently, only eleven out of the one hundred sitting senators identify as a racial or ethnic minority. When a judicial nominee of color sits before the Senate Judiciary Committee, rarely are they addressing people who look like them or hold similar life experiences. 

The entire political and judicial process, going all the way back to Jim Crow-era voter disenfranchisement, works to enable white leadership and suppress people of color from sitting on the federal judiciary or running our nation’s government. This intentional suppression of minority representation has concrete effects on judicial decisions today. In a conversation with AFJ, Justice Halim Dhanidina (a judge on the California Court of Appeals) noted that people who hold marginalized identities are more easily able to recognize when others are being discriminated against. These perspectives are critical in our federal court system, but our nation’s possessive investment in whiteness encumbers individuals with these experiences from being appointed. Through the frameworks I’ve been taught at Brandeis, I am able to scrutinize these systems and am even more energized to push back against them.

In April, I knew very little about the judicial system. I knew that sometimes lawyers became judges and that these judges ruled on many court cases each year. I knew that there was a Supreme Court, where nine justices who were(sometimes) very experienced and respected served lifetime appointments and made important decisions that impacted all of us. 

Then I became an intern at Alliance for Justice (AFJ), and I have learned that the court system is essentially a complex web of judges across the United States who interpret the law and determine individuals’ civil rights in monumental ways. Alliance for Justice works to ensure a “fair and independent justice system” by advocating for highly qualified individuals with diverse backgrounds to be appointed to these courts. While the Supreme Court hears fewer than one hundred cases a year, the federal court of appeals, district courts, and local courts hear hundreds of thousands of cases. That is a lot of decisions that impact a lot of peoples’ lives. Furthermore, all federal court judges are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate to serve lifetime terms, which gives the sitting president a lot of power.  

While judges are supposed to be nonpartisan, this isn’t always the case. Increasingly, the appointment of judges has become a political tool that prioritizes ideology and political affiliation over qualifications and experience–a trend that puts the civil rights and wellbeing of millions of people in jeopardy. Furthermore, during Trump’s four years in office, only 16% of his judicial appointments were non-white and only 24% were women. The makeup of the federal judiciary, like any field of public servants, must represent the country in race, gender, ethnicity, professional background, sexual orientation, and so much more. To achieve this goal and to reverse the damage that has been done to the courts, AFJ tracks judicial vacancies, advocates for experienced and diverse nominees, and pushes the Biden administration to prioritize federal court appointments. The organization also works to identify highly-qualified lawyers with experience in civil rights, public defense, and other law backgrounds that are traditionally underrepresented in the courts. 

As an outreach intern, I’m lucky to be able to engage in most of the aspects of work that AFJ does. I help build outreach lists for judicial nominee sign-on letters and connect with member organizations to engage them further with our work. I also spend a lot of my time researching our state courts, looking at the makeup of each state’s Supreme Court, learning when judges are up for reelection or retirement, and understanding the media landscapes of various states. The research I do now will inform where AFJ directs their time in 2022 and beyond, to ensure that our state courts, in addition to federal courts, are made up of experienced and diverse judges. Similarly, building outreach lists and connecting with member organizations and allies allows us to put pressure on the administration to appoint judges who represent the people they serve.

As courts at every level make daily decisions on environmental regulations, abortion access, LGBTQIA+ rights, checks on assault weapons, conditions for incarcerated individuals, and so much else, it feels so important to be doing this work. And as we do the work, we can see that the Biden Administration is listening.