Black Counsel Scarce at US Supreme Court
For the first time in more than a year, an African-American lawyer should be arguing before the U.S Supreme Court today. Even more unusual, Drew Days III is representing a corporate client.
The argument will be his 24th before the nation’s highest court, reports the Associated Press, solidly establishing Days as apparently the only black lawyer in the country who currently appears with such regularity, according to Richard Lazarus, a law professor at Georgetown University.
Although the Washington, D.C., law office of Morrison & Foerster, where Days works, has only two black partners, representing 5.6 percent of the partnership there, that statistic puts it fourth-highest on the list of 46 city law offices with more than 100 attorneys, as far as African-American partners are concerned, the news agency says. Nationwide, blacks account for about 5 percent of law firm partners. In Washington, at well over half of the 46 firms blacks account for less than 3 percent of the partners. Seven of the 46 law firms reportedly have no African-American partners, according to Building a Better Legal Profession, a law student group that compiled this data, based on information from the firms.
“Several factors account for the dearth of minorities at the court,” writes AP. They include: “continuing problems in recruiting and retaining blacks and other minorities at the top law firms; the rise of a small group of lawyers who focus on Supreme Court cases; the decline in civil rights cases that make it to the high court; and the court’s dwindling caseload.”
Says Days himself: “It breaks my heart. It’s the minority pipeline, the dwindling caseload, all of these things.”
