Approach The Bench

After reading news reports about attorneys writing briefs using artificial intelligence that fabricated case precedent, Judge Michael Baylson of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania was one the first federal judges to write standing orders on the use of AI. He requires all attorneys disclose if they’ve used AI to write their briefs, and to certify that they’ve checked e...

In the summer of 2020, Nick Chu, a young justice of the peace in Austin, Texas made history by presiding over the nation's first virtual criminal jury trial. The misdemeanor case involved a woman accused of speeding in a construction zone, and while that might seem uncomplicated, Chu and his staff worked through numerous procedures in order to translate an in-person proceeding to a video conferenc...

State constitutions are something of a pet issue for federal Sixth Circuit Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton, one that he’s written two books about. He believes lawyers, judges and law schools all put too much emphasis on federal constitutional law, while ignoring the fact that state constitutions often enshrine more rights, account for regional idiosyncrasies, and are far easier to amend. And he says th...

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 p...

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 managemen...

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...

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 unthinkab...

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 ins...