Connecticut Law Tribune: Lamont Asked to Nominate Woman of Color to State Supreme Court
This excerpt is from a piece that originally ran on August 14, 2024.
Vasu Abhiraman, the Helen Rosenthal senior counsel for the Building the Bench program at Alliance for Justice, said the group has always advocated equal justice in the courts. The organization historically centered in on the federal courts, but “within the last 10 years, we’ve focused more and more on the state level, especially state supreme courts,” Abhiraman said.
“State courts are where the majority of decisions are made,” Abhiraman said. “The state court system is actually what affects people the most within any given state.”
[…]
“There’s been a pipeline from corporate law offices and prosecutors offices to the bench, and I think the people have suffered because of it,” Abhiraman said. “Professional diversity and demographic diversity make a big difference to how courts actually rule, and we believe that professional diversity and demographic diversity furthers equal justice under the law.”
[…]
Abhiraman said it was disappointing when Lamont most recently nominated former prosecutor Nora Dannehy to the Supreme Court because he allegedly “had an opportunity to add a little more diversity to the bench than he ended up doing.”
“There’s a difference between having a diverse body and one that has the same old backgrounds,” Abhiraman claimed. ”It is a must that Gov. Lamont actually appoint somebody who can be historic in terms of the diversity that they add to the state Supreme Court.”