Despite the critical importance of judicial diversity for litigants and the broader public, no previous study has examined this issue within the French judiciary. Mathilde Cohen’s research begins to fill this gap by using original qualitative data that sheds light on judges’, prosecutors’, and other legal actors’ discourses on racial, ethnic, and sexual diversity. Mathilde Cohen shows that these legal professionals deploy three strategies— linguistic, conceptual, and geographic—to dodge or downplay the relevance of race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation to the judicial or prosecutorial work. The first, linguistic, form of avoidance lies in refusing to explicitly name and discuss race and ethnicity; the second, conceptual, in denying that the judiciary has a diversity problem or that the problem lies within its power; and the third, geographic, consists in relegating the issue of diversity to distant places—the United States and overseas France.

Mathilde Cohen is an Associate Professor of Law and Robert D. Glass Scholar at the University of Connecticut School of Law. Mathilde Cohen’s cross-disciplinary work spans a number of subjects, including deliberative democracy, comparative law, jurisprudence and judicial decision making, among others. Her recent research addresses attitudes about racial diversity in the French judiciary, the gendering and racialization of food, and the regulation of milk in France and the United States.

This event is cosponsored with the Center on Race, Law & Justice at Fordham Law School.

Kosher pizza will be served.

Brown Bag Lunch Series