NCJ Number
121735
Journal
Trial Volume: 26 Issue: 2 Dated: (February 1990) Pages: 36-37
Date Published
1990
Length
2 pages
Annotation
While task forces created to identify and ameliorate gender bias in judicial decisionmaking and courtroom interaction have met with considerable success in less than ten years, they nevertheless face five potential problems.
Abstract
First, gender bias task forces should focus their resources on judges and avoid taking on gender bias problems in the entire court system so that they will not diffuse their efforts away from the keystone of reform, the judiciary. Second, judicial education and on-going monitoring and evaluation should take precedence over developing a task force final report. Third, task forces should promote the needs of those who are voiceless and unable to articulate their complaints against injustice; they should not focus on gender bias against women lawyers. Fourth, task forces should encourage the media to focus not on the inequities experienced by women attorneys but on inequities dealt the needy. Fifth, task forces must avoid focusing on courtroom interaction to the exclusion of judicial decisionmaking in substantive law.