NYCLA Amicus Curiae Podcast: A Conversation with Hon. Joseph F. Bianco, U.S. Cir [0:00-5:01]

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