Judges are being trained to develop “anti-racist” courtrooms.

Spectrum

This fall, the National Judicial College (NJC), located on the campus of the University of Nevada-Reno, will hold its second groundbreaking course to teach judges from across the nation how to develop and maintain anti-racist courtrooms.

This four-day course will be held in Montgomery, Alabama. Last years, inaugural course took place in Memphis, Tennessee.

“Participants will be challenged to examine their own beliefs, including unconscious beliefs, and consider anti-racist theory with practice as potential antidotes to bias,” says Judge Benes Aldana, president of the NJC.

The course is designed to identify sources of personal and systemic bias in courtrooms and to create or facilitate effective interventions.

Successful participants in the class are expected to lead “impactful initiatives to identify and mitigate sources of bias in the legal system, according to Judge Gayle Williams Byers, a Fellow at the NJC.

The course curriculum includes history, experiential learning, cognitive science, and psychological and sociological research.