NYCLA Amicus Curiae Podcast: A Conversation with Hon. Joseph F. Bianco, U.S. Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit, Co-Chair, Justice For All Initiative

Amicus Curriye, with host Daniel K. Wick, a podcast series from the New York County Lawyers Association. Join us monthly for candid, useful, inspirational and entertaining conversations with leaders of the bench and bar and those who serve the legal profession. So Judge, when we say civics education, what do we mean by that? This education is the court system reaching out to the community and opening up the court system so that the whole community can understand their courts better, see how they operate, hopefully be potentially inspired by what they see in the courtroom and to demystify the whole court system to the public. And we'll get into that in other aspects as well. So I'd like to welcome our listeners to season two, episode one, believe it or not. We were renewed for a second season, folks, of Amicus Curriye, an eyckless podcast of casual, comfortable and friendly conversations with leaders of the bench and bar and those who serve the legal profession. For those of you who have listened to this podcast, they still haven't given me a raise. I was hoping for a season two, but it didn't happen. I am so pleased today to welcome the honorable Joseph Bianco, associate judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the second circuit, who is joining us today in his capacity as co-chair of the Justice for All Courts and the Community Committee to talk a little bit or a lot about the work that he and his co-chair, the honorable Victor Moreiro, who is, as many of you know, a senior judge in the District Court for the Southern District of New York, about this very important initiative. So welcome, Judge Bianco, and thank you for joining us. Thank you, Dan. I'm very excited to be with you. Great. So talk to us a little bit about, in general, the Justice for All Committee. What is it? How did it start? So our former chief judge, Bob Katzman, who unfortunately passed away early this year, but was a wonderful chief judge, a wonderful person. When he became chief judge back in 2013, as one of his signature initiatives, he wanted to increase civics education across the courts in the circuit. And like, know what the person could, everybody loved Judge Katzman. You couldn't find a nicer, smarter man than he was, and you couldn't say no to him. So he compiled this All Star Committee of Judges, lawyers, and educators, and basically said to us, this is our mission. This is the vision of what we can do as a court system across the circuit. We can be a model then for other courts around the country. And he divided us up into subcommittees, and his directive was to find new ways to reach out to the community, and to bring the community into the court system so they can understand it better. And that was back in 2014, and it's amazing what he was able to accomplish. Judge Moreiro was co-chair with him in the beginning, and then when Judge Katzman passed away, I had the privilege of now working with Judge Moreiro as a co-chair on the committee. What did Judge Katzman see as sort of the need for this? I mean, you've mentioned before understanding how the courts work, understanding how you define civics education, was there some issue or problem that Judge Katzman saw in the community that he needed to, in his view, rectify through the creation of this endeavor? Yes, and I think we all see it as judges. There's a lot of misperceptions in the community about the justice system, and it starts at a very young age. I get, you know, I do these field trips, I get letters from students afterwards thanking me and saying things like, I thought you'd be old and mean and yellow people. I had a letter I actually pulled it that said, dear Judge Bianco, I always thought that the courthouse would be old, smelly, boring and uninteresting, but I was wrong. So this just shows you, you know, fifth graders, at fifth grade, they've already developed these misperceptions about judges and about the courts, and obviously that could come from a lot of different sources, programs on TV, you see Judge Judy, you see movies like my cousin Vinnie, you know, updating myself a little bit, but this is how people, if they haven't had a personal interaction with the court system, this is how they develop their views, and obviously the news can do that if there's some negative aspect to our court system that's played out in the news that becomes how people view the court system, and then you do have even kids, but adults obviously who have interacted with the court system as a litigant and may have had an unfavorable experience and that just sticks with them. So he felt, and I think we, as judges, we all share this, that our justice system is far from perfect, but if people can understand it better, understand the role of judges in the courts, and see the constitution essentially come alive, that it will be better for society as a whole. So tell us a little bit about how the Justice for All Committee accomplishes this. What are some of the ways it seeks to educate or enlighten the community about how the courts really work, and to bring the constitution to life, as you said? The focus is more on students, although we do have adult program, which we talk about as well. The focus is to reach children at a young age while they're in school, and try to accomplish these goals. I just want to emphasize that it's not just educating them about the court system. The goals are broader than that. We have seen through these programs, you can get them thinking, even elementary school, but certainly in high school, about a potential career in the law, in some aspect of the judicial system, whether it be as a judge or a lawyer, a probation officer, legal aid attorney, whatever that might be their passion potentially, you can have them start thinking about that, and work hard and school to achieve that goal. But even broader than that, you really can make a difference in a life of a student beyond the court system, because we talk about our own life experiences and how we got to be a judge. When our kids come in, I tell them about my life, but there's no lawyers in my family. If someone told me when I was in fifth grade or in high school, that I would be a federal judge appointed by the president, I would tell them they're crazy. So, we try to inspire them to show them that whatever they decide to be, I said, I don't want to create a loom full of lawyers. At the end of the field trips, I say, who wants to be a lawyer or judge, and like, all these hands are going, like, no, that's too many lawyers to be able to do it, they're so ready. But it just shows you the impact that it can have. And then I say to them, look, I don't want to make lawyers at everybody. You have to decide what you want to do with your life. If you work hard, your world will light up, even if you don't know what you want to do at this point. And we have seen that that could change a kid's life, that that experience and that type of talk can really alter their whole trajectory of their life. So that's what our programming seeks to do in general. Tell us a little bit less about opening up the possibility of entering the legal profession and how, sort of, the type of programs that you do to educate students on the court system, on the legal process. And I know, for example, you do programs with high school teachers, I believe. Tell us a little bit about what you do there. I just want to start with the field trips to the courthouse, because I think that is the bread and butter of what we can do. We can use the courthouse itself and the people who work in the courthouse to educate the students. So just to give you an example, what a field trip might look like, what I'll take fifth graders. So the fifth graders would come in every Friday out here in Central Lysop, before the pandemic for 10 years, and they come in about 50 students with their teachers, their parents. I will talk to them about the role of a judge, give them examples of real cases, you know, trademark cases, something that kids can easily understand. So we talk about the selection process, how to, you know, point it for life, the president selects you. So they learn about the constitution, the article two, article three, and then we take them into the courtroom. And you see their eyes light up, obviously most of them have never been in the courtroom. So they're in my chambers for the first part. They come into the courtroom and their eyes light up, and you know, in our federal courthouses, the, you know, it's pretty majestic. They can't think how big it is, and then we usually have the US marshals come in, and they talk about, you know, their role, they will put one of the kids in handcuffs and light chains, and they will march into the jail cells, and, you know, it's funny, that's the most popular part of the trip that I've had kids, you know, say, wow, this is so cool. I'm like, no, no, no, no, this is not cool. You know, it's pretty interesting for them to see a real cell. I emphasize to them, by the way, it's part of the lessons. Like, you know, you think it's cool because you're in there for two minutes, but think if you're in there for two years and you want with your family and you're missing everything, I try to explain to them, you know, how terrible it is to end up in a situation like that. So the marshals come, depending on how much time we could, all the speakers come in to speak to them, lawyers, but the field trip ends with, for the fifth graders at least, a Cinderella 20s, a minute Cinderella mock trial that we've created with a real little glass slipper. It's a script. So I get to play all the different roles. One kid gets to put on the robe and be the judge, but the witness is jurors, you know, lawyers, and they just love that. We put in things from movies like, and from cases like, we actually have Cinderella try on the slipper and the summation of a glass slipper doesn't fit. You must quit. Parents are all cracking up. The kids have no idea why everybody is left. We have a, you can't handle the truth moment during one of the cross-examinations and, you know, they don't realize they're emulating Jack Nicholson. So that's two hours, and I can't tell you what an impact that has on them on all different levels that we've talked about. We get the letters reflecting that. The teachers tell us, and we've had in this courthouse alone, somewhere over 10,000 students come through 50 at a time every Friday during the school year, and, you know, it's a whole team. It's not just me. It's a whole team of people that make it a special event. You know, it's a little bit different from high school, but we do the same thing for high school students. Is this just in your chambers in Central Isle, or is it more expansive throughout the second circuit? That was the goal of the Justice for All Program, is that some judges were doing this. You know, I have six kids, so when I became a judge, I was naturally trapped in civics education. I think it's important that judges serve the community with public servants. You can get pretty isolated, I guess, especially when you have a life tenure, and so that was something I was doing on my own before Judge Katzman said, wait, we don't want this to be ad hoc. We want every, every one of our courthouses in the circuit to have this available, and to put someone as a point person, so teachers know who to call, and to have all the speakers lined up, and that's what we've been able to accomplish. And in the third-grade Marshall courthouse in Manhattan, Judge Katzman built a learning center. So now they come in, and I don't only have the speakers and the things that I've talked about, but they go into a learning center that's very interactive, that the students love, especially at the high school level. So each courthouse has their own unique way of putting on the field trips, but the key is that it's going on in every courthouse, and it's available to teachers across the circuit at every age. And then we have Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts who come in, we show them the naturalization ceremony sometimes. There's nothing more inspiring than a naturalization ceremony, so if in time of visit, they could sit and watch citizens be sworn in, that's a home run. So that has been our signature, I think, most important accomplishment, but one of the other things that we've done in that area, we noticed like two hours isn't enough. We can do so much more, so we were the first courth in the country to ever have a one-week summer camp, Judge Katzman used to like pull the boot camp. I said, no, boot camp makes sound like the military, it's not boot camp, but it's basically a full week of speakers from across the spectrum. We get law students who work with the students to help them get ready for competition at the end of the week. And we invite the parents to come on the last day of the week and watch them, their parents can't leave, how much their kids grew in a week, just what they observed and what was taught to them. And we always try to have an inspiring speaker at the end. We had Mary Beth Tinker from Tinker V. Des Moines, who wore her black arm band during the Vietnam War and went up to the Supreme Court. She's now a speaker about how you can impact the world even at a young age. So we try to find someone who they can identify with, who even at a young age was already doing something in the area of civics. We had another speaker who was at the Montgomery bus boycott as a 17-year-old, had a whole career in civil rights. Another woman who was in a Japanese internment camp as a teenager and went on to do great things. So this is what I mean when we try to inspire them at so many different levels, but we realize that two hours, we can accomplish a lot, but give us a week and we can really change their lives. And that's something now. This summer, we're going to expand it. That summer camp is going to take place in multiple courthouses across the circuit. And other courts around the country are watching what we're doing and hoping that it'll catch on across the nation. So going back to one of the first points you raised about, you know, this was born out of because there's a misconception out there about the courts and the judicial process. Maybe people misrepresented on television and they get a certain idea that's inaccurate. And that reminds me when Judge Reikoff was against on this podcast, I was raised a law and order episode that always stuck in my mind where the judge is hearing a motion limiting on the courthouse steps, the state courthouse steps, smoking a cigarette. That's not reality. And Judge Reikoff pointed out that it's not real for him because he doesn't smoke. What do you think we can do, the general public, lawyers and others, to give an accurate impression? This Hollywood need to sort of change their tune, do people need to speak more favorably about the court system or more accurately? Any thoughts on that? Super important. That's why the courthouse itself provides a perfect venue for that because when you bring students into the courthouse, you can explain to them how the liver of the process is, how everyone has their role. You show them. This is where the jury sits and you explain. These people come from the community. You wouldn't believe how many students believe that judges decide whether someone's guilty or not guilty. They ask me all the time, how do you decide whether someone's guilty or not guilty? Never mind them. In our system, we have a jury and they sit here and your parents and other people come into the courthouse and then you explain to them the role of the lawyers. Everybody gets a chance to be heard. You show them the jury room. This is where the jury will sit and you have to have 12 people agree unanimously because this is important. Someone's freedom is hanging in the balance and I always explain to them that when a jury comes in with a verdict, it's one of the most, it's the height of human drama, especially in a criminal case where someone's freedom hangs in the balance and everybody in the court was waiting to hear what that four person says and everybody's life is going to be impacted by that in the courtroom one way or another. That type of venue and lawyers have an important role in that. That's why we yes lawyers. We don't want to just give the judges perspective. We want to have them hear from a legal aid attorney explain the importance of not having to get up yourself and defend yourself, but having a lawyer who's trained in the law who works with you and tries to defend you into the best of their ability. This is an opportunity, lawyers don't always have that chance on their own. They're doing their job and they're more than willing to fill that role. We try to provide opportunity to them. We reach out the bar associations and other similar organizations to let them know we need your help. These are our programs and we need lawyers to talk about what they do. Why it's so important, how you can use your degree to impact the world and it makes all the difference when you reach out to the community in that way. How does that work with the schools when they send classes for the two-hour tour and the Cinderella trial? How do you connect with them and where can people who might be listening find information about that? This is the difference between before Judge Catsman and after Judge Catsman and before Judge Catsman was an individual judge's word of mouth whereas we sent out letters initially to all the school districts letting them know about some of our programs. We now have this website, the Justice for All website that has all the programings. If you go on there, the first thing it says is, do you want to feel tripped? Let this box and let us know right now we're doing them, unfortunately that we virtual still but we're hoping soon to be able to start them up again in person so the website now has become a central repository for all teachers to go and we just got on YouTube. We have a Twitter account so we recognize the need to have all these programs reach the teachers and we're using every mechanism we can and certainly there's no one better situated in the New York State Bar Association to help us get that message out. So tell us a little bit about I think it's called the Education Center at the Thurgood Marshall courthouse other than these sort of reenactments or these tours that you mentioned. What other sort of educational initiatives take place there for people to participate in? One thing I wanted to mention, you mentioned it earlier, we have initiatives not just for students but for teachers so we have something called the Teachers Institute where over the summer dozens of teachers, New York City teachers come to the courthouse, this summer it was a First Amendment, another year it was National Security where again top speakers we had Kathleen Sullivan and Floyd Abrams speak to them on the First Amendment, couldn't have more illustrious superstars in that area than speakers like that and for a week and even the teachers get up at the end of that week and they do a mock argument you know they're not lawyers but we want them to experience it and then take it back to the classroom they then learn about all resources so you know the Teachers Institute has been a great way of doing that and then we try to equip them on the website or videos they could show to the class, we have also written materials that hopefully in a very easy manner explain the court system to their students if they're teaching you know separation of powers, you know, Article 2, Article 3 to give them materials to help them in that way, we have this essay contest to which we're so proud to team up with the New York State Bar Association that allows students to pick a topic like equal protection, research it and write an essay about it so we're giving them tools that they can take back into the classroom to again widen the student's knowledge of civic education and tell us about more about the summer camp how does that work, how can people apply, I mean I realize it's been virtual or you know because of the situation we're in but moving forward, we try not to do that with individual students applying on their own, we have schools to send us so we can have as many schools participate usually for students to operate as like a team so we got the schools identified you know some of them might be mood court students already and have some knowledge of that and maybe interested which is fine but we also want to reach out to schools that have no mood court program at all especially underserved communities and because the camp is free for everybody it's a great opportunity so through the schools they can send four students and you know everything we can provide transportation but assuming the parents and or the school can get them to the courthouse each day we take it from there and try to make it you know again it's fast moving it's interesting that moving around the courthouse the different you know places in the courthouse they may some stomach in the courtroom go up to the library to the learning center so the goal is to make it you know let's know the last thing students want to hear is you know schools type things over the summer so it really operates and not very interesting you know if secret service agents come in talk about protecting the president we have a bomb-snipping dog that's been on Good Morning America come in and you have celebrities yeah we have shell casings in the courtroom that we hide in this dog amazingly you can find them in like two minutes so it's it's a special special thing and what other types of programs do you offer specifically where do you need volunteers you know maybe we can reach people through this podcast to enlist people to sort of help you in your endeavor here we need especially bar associations to help us get out the word about all these programs to all the communities that they interact with but we also need their help to make certain of these programs work so for example there's a McCourt competition that's been going on in New York City for decades where schools get teamed up with a law firm and the law firm works with them to help them get ready for the competition and we can always use more law firms to be involved in that we're now expanding that program you know it doesn't have to be a big New York City law firm to do that we now have another districts of Fordham law school creates the packet and we are using that packet in other districts and we have you know lawyers who could be on Long Island could be an upstate New York hopefully who could participate in that type of mentoring with students in a McCourt context a program that we're currently developing they'll open a rollout next year and I think this is a wonderful program to have the students visit a law firm in the same way they would visit the courthouse because we do want to get the lawyers perspective so you know and a lot of high schools now have wall related classes there's so many high schools that have business law or other wall related classes where the teacher and the students would go to the law firm the law firm could talk about interesting matters they're working on pro bono or whatever you know the law firm specializes in maybe have some lawyers talk about how they achieved you know the success that they have by studying and the obstacles that they have hopefully again inspire them in that way and then have the lawyers do a little court with them you know in the law firm to have them just get on their feet and get some confidence just you know all these skills of getting up on your feet and answering questions and getting comfortable in that way you know can help these kids no matter what they decide to do we all know how public speaking is a very fearful thing for most people so every one of these types of the activities we try to create those types of opportunities but we are hoping law firms through the bar associations will volunteer to host you know one or two times a year you know a class at the firm itself in conjunction we would have our justice for all you know staff they're to coordinate and make sure it goes right the lawyers will run it but we would provide them with all the materials they would need to make it a success and have other circuits develop their own initiative in this area judge katsman had this great idea a few years ago because he always thought big of having a summit civic education summit where representatives of every circuit court in the country came chief judges of some of the circuits came but certainly someone from each circuit came we talked about all the things that we were doing we got input from them because we're obviously not the only circuit doing things we want to see what other ideas were out there that we could you know we cooperate to our programming and as a result of that summit and the ongoing interactions we get requests from other circuits for certain details on program that they want to copy which we're happy you've been the copy completely and that has been a huge development we had justice sort of my own justice course it's both spoke at that summit to emphasize and chief justice Roberts has as well how important they all believe civic education is so it is definitely created momentum and joint efforts by the federal courts across the country again where I can't emphasize how tightly we work with all the bar associations to make it successful if someone's interested in getting involved what are some of the opportunities that they have and how can they reach out to you or members of your team to get involved the easiest ways the justice plural website we have all the contact information up there and if you're an attorney and any aspect of what I've talked about interests you you want to be involved you can just contact us through the website say yeah this is how I would like to contribute and someone will reach out to you and we will be delighted to have your partnership on this and certainly if you're aware of schools teachers anybody in the education world who would you know be interested in these programs you can certainly point them also to the website to arrange field trips getting information about the essay contest it's all all up there right let's turn a little bit to you judge so you are a graduate of Columbia law school bring us a little bit about you know how you ended up on the second circuit and so the steps you took before arriving there I tell people I'm exhibit a that you know anything can happen you two can be a federal judge because when I was a kid I was the shyest kid in the class never raised my hand if someone had told me you're gonna be appointed by the president and you're gonna be a judge I would have told him you're crazy but I don't even want to do that that's not me I'm scared of that and it just shows you you never know how your life's gonna turn out but you know I went to Georgetown underground as a government major didn't really know exactly what I was gonna do and people were going to law school so I went to law school I got into Columbia was fortunate enough to get in and when I got there I was like okay now what am I gonna do you know here I am now in a life of public speaking and not comfortable with that but this is one of the rare to show you I never know how your life's gonna turn out judge Lynch was my criminal law professor at Columbia in 1988 and he was amazing and now he's my colleague on the circuit but and he's probably scratching his head had this kid make it but he made criminal law come alive to me and once I started thinking about careers in criminal law I interned for a federal judge judge convoy on the southern district saw what prosecutors were doing and I was like okay if I get over my pure public speaking this will be for me it's it's interesting it's important and so I then went into the US attorney's office became the terrorism prosecutor because you know not because I intended to be but because unfortunately al-Qaeda became more active and we became terrorism prosecutors and as a result of those efforts President Bush put me on the district court you know when I was 39 years old there I am on the district court with no political connections which is pretty unusual when I tell the judges my path they're like oh come on you know you didn't know my senator I was like no I didn't know anybody I didn't know the senators actually one of my favorite stories out the motto who was obviously retired at the time but when I became a district judge on the line one year and you know he's from Long Island he called me up I had never spoken to him before he says judge Bianco is this out the motto I just want to congratulate you I have a question for you you're Italian you're from Long Island and you're a federal judge I have no idea who you are how is that possible and then I thought I would have this job that district court job for the rest of my life I was happiest can be and then out of the blue you know I got a call from the White House to interview for the circuit which was an enormous privilege I didn't think I would get that either and somehow it all worked out and it's been fantastic the second circuit really is a family the judges very close knit wonderful colleagues cases are so interesting and important to individuals and society so I can't think of a better way in the legal profession to you know to have a meaningful job than this was it a hard transition from trial court to appellate court other judges have sort of said that to me both on the state and the federal side carries your thoughts yeah although I've retained some of my district court cases because I do love the district court I love the action and the interactions with the public of jurors and lawyers so I kind of didn't want to give that up but you know the transition is easy in some respects because you're reading briefs and you're writing opinions and obviously I've been doing that for over a decade but the hardest part it really is that you have to have two other or at least one other the other two judges on board with you as a district court judge you make the decisions you write the opinions whereas here you you know you have to all be on the same page and and then when you write an opinion you know you have to circulate it and you could be fighting over footnotes and that's a big adjustment when you're used to just sort of operating and making decisions on your own but I didn't come to enjoy that part of it and look forward to because sometimes in the tough cases I'm looking forward to hearing what their thoughts are to help me decide the case where's the district judge you don't really have that full opportunity to so you know you can always call up a colleague and ask for advice but it's not the same when you're seeing on a panel together you've already the briefs and researched so I've found it to be helpful to have their input also on the opinions too you know I kid about it but you know after I put in their suggestions I really pain I'm like okay that's much better now it's much clearer and that was a little bit getting used to but I actually like that part of the job as well now and how did you get your role with the Justice for All Committee with the Chief Judge Livingston appoint you or you know how is that process yes fortunately Judge Katzman passed away she knew I was very active already on the committee worked very closely with Judge Katzman on a lot of these different programs and she called me and I told her I'm so happy you called me because it's also way for me to stay close to him I was you know he was a mentor for me I thought so highly of him and I feel by continuing the vision I feel close to him in this work so I don't consider it sure I see the impact that it has it's fun towarding my Judge Marrairo has been great he brought me up to speed very quickly on all the different aspects of the program that I didn't know when I was just on the committee so we've been working very well as a team and hoping to expand Judge Katzman vision over the years to come and I think that's a good way to end this episode so Judge Bianca thank you very much for joining us and telling us a little bit about the justice for all committee I would encourage our listeners who are interested to please go to the website and find ways that you can help contribute to this very very important endeavor and thank you everyone for listening to this season two episode one episode I'm Dan with your host we hope you will tune in for season two episode two with Elise Hulsman from the lawyer's edge who will talk many things with us including mentorships promoting women and other sort of career development issues thank you again and that is a wrap thank you for listening to Nyclah and Kesturi I can't at least speaking with host Daniel Kay Whig a podcast from the New York County Lawyers Association new and previous episodes are available on Apple podcasts Android Stitcher and Spotify if you enjoyed this episode please subscribe share rate and leave a review on your listening platform to find out more or to join our incredible inclusive legal community please visit nyclah.org we hope you'll join us on the next monthly installment of Nyclah Omega Sturi I candidly speaking they sure to follow our Twitter feed at amaclis nyclah for information 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