Approach The Bench

About a year into his tenure on the bench, Judge Juan Villasenor of the Eighth Judicial District of the state of Colorado hadn’t given much thought to a quirk in his state’s rules of civil procedure that allows jurors to discuss a case during trial. Then an attorney in a medical malpractice suit filed a motion seeking to bar deliberations before closing arguments. That sparked a sort of research project for the judge, who learned all about the history of the practice in Colorado and in other states.

He then sought to educate other judges about the benefits of allowing jurors to deliberate as a trial progresses and about another Colorado rule that allows jurors to ask questions of witnesses. He wrote in Judicature magazine praising both unusual practices.

On this month’s episode of Approach The Bench, we asked Judge Villasenor about how those practices play out in his courtroom, and about the lessons learned during his relatively young judicial career.

Since the start of her career, Justice Teri Jackson has been a pioneer. As an assistant district attorney, she launched San Francisco’s First Offender Prostitution Program, widely considered the nation’s first “john school” for first-time offenders charged with sex solicitation, and she forged new ground in elder abuse prosecutions. As a San Francisco Superior Court judge, she wrote case management orders that are now used across the state. And as a presiding justice on California’s court of appeal, she helped implement the state’s Judicial Mentor Program, which seeks to improve geographic, racial and gender representation on the bench by mentoring district judges and attorneys. 

Justice Jackson herself knows how daunting it is to be a trailblazer. She has frequently been the “first” over the course of her career— the first woman to head the homicide unit in the San Francisco prosecutor’s office, the first Black woman to serve on a San Francisco Superior Court, and the first Black woman to serve on the First Appellate District. On this month’s episode of Approach The Bench, Justice Jackson speaks with us about her storied career and how it’s influenced her to help other would-be judges.

In his four decades as a jurist, Massachusetts U.S. District Court Judge William Young has thought deeply about the art of judging. 

As a state court judge, he was such a proponent of courtroom transparency, he allowed the 1983 trial of a gang rape case to be broadcast, which sparked a Senate subcommittee hearing about victim privacy in court proceedings. He also wrote an open letter to his fellow judges to warn about the perils of abandoning the jury trial, and he has opined that he is a practitioner of what he calls “the trial model,” which he argues is more productive than the “administrative model” most judges use.

When we spoke with him, his desk in chambers was stacked high with papers and binders of evidence, because he was virtually presiding over a bench trial in Puerto Rico. Though he took senior status about two years ago, that’s just another example of how he’s still putting the “trial” in trial judge.

Judge Esther Salas was already a trailblazer when she became the first Latina to ascend to the federal bench in New Jersey, and in more than a decade as a jurist, she has taken on a sprawling docket that includes everything from a drug cartel prosecution to a securities class action to a bank fraud case involving reality television stars.

But in 2020, she became a household name after an unthinkable tragedy. Her home was attacked by an armed attorney — a self-avowed “anti-feminist” who’d previously appeared before Judge Salas. He critically wounded her husband, Mark, and fatally shot their only son, Daniel, who was 20 years old. 

Since then, Judge Salas has become a national figure, advocating for improved judicial security. She spoke to us a few weeks after the three-year anniversary of the shooting.

What do judges think about? What’s going through their mind as they sit on the bench and what advice might they have for anyone who argues before them? Those are some of the questions we aim to answer with Law360’s new monthly podcast series Approach The Bench, where each month we interview a sitting judge about the work of judging and the issues the judiciary faces. Each episode offers a peek inside the chambers and personalities of some of the country’s leading jurists. Our series kicks off on Aug. 22 when we interview New Jersey District Judge Esther Salas, hope you join us!