
Nicole Lee
Ndumele
Senior Vice President, Rights and Justice
Structural Reform and Governance
The Courts and Legal Policy team works to advance reforms to make America’s legal system more accessible and just for ordinary people.
Despite recent and historic gains, America’s federal judges remain overwhelmingly white and male, and the bench is stacked with those from corporate law backgrounds and former federal prosecutors. Appointing diverse nominees with diverse backgrounds is essential to strengthening the courts.
From significant expansion of the lower courts to instituting term limits for Supreme Court justices, it is critical to enact reforms that will ensure that the size of the judiciary and the makeup of the Supreme Court reflect the needs of the American people and the realities of modern life.
Too often, justice in America’s courtrooms is only accessible to those with means and in power. The need to expand access to justice has only become more pressing as COVID-19 has exacerbated long-standing legal inequities. All people, regardless of income or status, deserve high-quality legal help.
Individual and collective accountability for the family separation policy is needed to hold individuals responsible, restore faith in government institutions, prevent further abuses, and provide appropriate redress.
Policymakers must ensure that state and federal officials can be held accountable in court when they violate the law and harm those they are supposed to protect.
The Supreme Court must prioritize public safety over partisan challenges to valid public health orders.
Policymakers can diversify the federal courts by confirming more lawyers from civil rights and public defender backgrounds to the bench as well as creating pipelines of young attorneys from a range of professions for future judgeships.
The Trump administration has undertaken a sustained attack on the rule of law, but a future administration can take immediate steps to restore it.
It is essential to update the rules governing the Supreme Court to better reflect modern life.
The compositions of the country’s federal courts should better reflect the nation’s increasingly diverse population.
Meaningful access to abortion care, as well as the ability to enforce abortion and other civil and human rights in court, are at stake in the upcoming Supreme Court case.
Dismantling the culture of power that sustains and fuels gender-based violence requires a comprehensive, national strategy that connects meaningful policy solutions across the diverse issues affecting survivors and communities.
The federal judiciary does not reflect the population that it serves, which has severe consequences for both the institution’s legitimacy and the parties who come before it.