The National Judicial Education Program is a unique, award-winning project which pioneered judicial education about gender bias and was the catalyst for nearly 50 high level state and federal task forces on gender bias in the courts nationwide. In 1980, the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund established the National Judicial Education Program to Promote Equality for Women and Men in the Courts (NJEP) and invited the newly-formed National Association of Women Judges to become NJEP's co-sponsor. Knowledgeable judges, lawyers and journalists warned that the judiciary would never accept gender bias as a legitimate topic for judicial education or be willing to engage in the self-scrutiny necessary to eliminate it. Yet over the years, NJEP has moved the issue of gender bias in the courts from being nonexistent for the judiciary to being the featured educational program at the 1986 annual meeting of the Conference of Chief Justices, grounds for reversal and sanction, and a priority for the state teams focused on building public trust and confidence in the courts today.

Over the past twenty years, NJEP has utilized a three-fold approach to promote access to the justice system and equality for women and men in the courts: education, publications and supporting the task forces on gender bias in the courts.

JUDICIAL, PUBLIC AND LEGAL EDUCATION
NJEP creates model curricula and presents and advises on programs about gender bias in the courts for judicial colleges and organizations, bar associations, law schools, and legal and lay organizations across the country. Gender bias often results from lack of knowledge about the social and economic realities of women's and men's lives. Thus, much of NJEP's work includes an interdisciplinary approach toward supplying that information and showing its relevance to judicial decisionmaking and the legal system. Understanding Sexual Violence: The Judicial Response to Stranger and Nonstranger Rape and Sexual Assault, NJEP's model curriculum on rape trials, was published in December 1994 and has been presented in over twenty states as well as abroad. A self-directed video version of this curriculum and an adaptation for prosecutors are also available. The video is a valuable resource for many other professionals in addition to the judiciary, including police, prosecutors, defense attorneys, victim advocates, medical personnel, sex offender treatment providers and for community education.

In 1996, NJEP published Adjudicating Allegations of Child Sexual Abuse When Custody is in Dispute to assist judges in dealing with this vexing area of law by providing the most current, empirically-based information about assessing child sexual abuse allegations in the custody context. When Bias Compounds: Insuring Equal Justice for Women of Color in the Courts, published in 1998, prompts judges to think about actions they can take to address problems faced by women of color as litigants, witnesses, defendants, court employees, lawyers, and judges.

These and other NJEP programs help judges, lawyers and others understand how stereotypes, myths and biases about the nature and roles of women and men affect fact finding, decisionmaking, sentencing, communication, and courtroom behavior. Among the wide range of issues NJEP programs address are: how sex stereotypes shape the admission of evidence and sentencing in rape cases; devaluation of women and so-called "women's work" in personal injury and equitable distribution cases; how the courtroom treatment of women litigants, witnesses, lawyers and experts affects women's credibility; bias in support awards and enforcement, focusing on the sharp economic disparities created by the courts after divorce; domestic violence; sexual harassment; how gender bias operates against both men and women in child custody disputes; and the compound bias faced by women of color in the courts at every level.

PUBLICATIONS
NJEP increases professional and public awareness of gender bias in the courts and identifies ways to eliminate it through articles it publishes in professional journals and other media. When NJEP began in 1980, articles about gender bias in the courts were confined to women's law journals. Due to NJEP's involvement, the subject is now featured in mainstream judicial and legal periodicals and the popular press.

STATE AND FEDERAL COURT TASK FORCES ON GENDER BIAS IN THE COURTS
NJEP's judicial education programs were the catalyst for a series of task forces established by state chief justices and federal circuit councils to examine gender bias in their own court systems. These task forces document discriminatory court decisions, policies and practices and implement recommendations to eradicate these barriers to equal justice. NJEP provides technical assistance to the task forces in all phases of their work as investigating bodies, implementation committees and standing committees of the courts. Task forces in more than 40 states and seven federal circuits are now in various stages of data collection, implementing recommendations and institutionalizing reforms.

At its 1988 annual meeting, the Conference of Chief Justices adopted a resolution urging every Chief Justice to establish a task force "devoted to the study of gender bias in the courts." In 1999, the National Conference on Public Trust and Confidence in the Justice System, attended by teams from every state that included the chief justice, state court administrator and state bar president, voted to make implementing the recommendations of the task forces on gender, race and ethnic bias in the courts a priority.

The findings of the forty-one task forces that have published reports to date are summed up in this quotation from the Report of the New York Task Force on Women in the Courts:

"The Task Force has concluded that gender bias against women litigants, attorneys and court employees is a pervasive problem with grave consequences. Women are often denied equal justice, equal treatment and equal opportunity."

The reports of the task forces on gender bias in the courts have now been cited in more than one hundred state and federal judicial opinions. These include cases reversing judges for gender-biased decision-making and sanctioning attorneys for gender-biased conduct. NJEP offers several publications describing how to establish and operate a gender bias task force, implement its recommendations, and evaluate its impact: Operating a Task Force on Gender Bias in the Courts: A Manual for Action (1986); Planning for Evaluation: Guidelines for Task Forces on Gender Bias in the Courts (1989); Learning from the New Jersey Task Force on Women in the Courts: Evaluation, Recommendations and Implications for Other States (1991); Implementation Resources Directory, (1998); and the forthcoming Gender Fairness in the Courts: Action in the New Millennium (2001). The new publication will provide strategies for implementing recommendations and institutionalizing reforms drawn from the experiences of gender bias task forces throughout the country.

Bar associations are playing a vital role in institutionalizing the work of the task forces and extending the reach of the national effort to eliminate gender bias in the courts. Many task forces made specific recommendations for bar associations in areas such as lawyer education. Bar associations are also collaborating with gender bias task forces and implementation committees to co-sponsor a variety of educational programs and other activities. Task force reports also serve as a stimulus for bar associations to independently establish special committees on gender bias and chart their own strategies for reform. NJEP's Implementation Resources Directory describes actions taken by bar associations that other bars can easily adapt. These actions range from supporting a single piece of legislation to conducting an evaluation of the entire task force implementation effort.

NJEP IS MAKING A DIFFERENCE
NJEP is the first and only program of its kind. Over the last twenty years it has presented education programs for thousands of state and federal trial and appellate judges, and thousands more lawyers and law students in every part of the country. NJEP's education programs and its work with the gender bias task forces have improved the quality of justice, generating changes in decisionmaking and the court environment that reflect a new understanding of how gender bias undermines fairness. A judge at NJEP's 1981 pilot course in California wrote:

"I was quite shocked at the information we received indicating the disparity between males and females and the treatment of them in the courts...Many of the myths that are taken as fact by judges were shattered by your presentation and the correct situation was revealed. It was the impact of knowledge on ignorance."

In 1995, Minnesota and Oregon judges attending the first presentations of NJEP's model judicial education curriculum, Understanding Sexual Violence: The Judicial Response to Stranger and Nonstranger Rape and Sexual Assault, gave it such high evaluation scores that additional presentations for judges and others were planned immediately. One Oregon judge wrote that he had been on the bench for twenty-five years and this was the best judicial education program he had ever attended. When NJEP piloted its video version if this curriculum in 1999, a Montana supreme court justice wrote:

"The program as a whole is excellent, in particular educating the audience about nonstranger rape and all the misconceptions about rape that pervade the perceptions of victims, jurors and judges."

After participating in the 1998 Georgia pilot program of When Bias Compounds: Insuring Equal Justice for Women of Color in the Courts, one judge reported that NJEP's program gave him a new perspective on additional steps necessary to make it possible for women on limited incomes who are primary caretakers for children or elderly, many of whom are women of color, to serve on juries.

The gender bias task forces have also had a positive impact. At a 1999 national conference to assess this impact and develop future strategies, the judge chairing Florida's implementation committee stated, "The statutory changes we achieved...have made a significant difference in the lives of Florida prosecutors." The director of the original Massachusetts task force said, "I see the difference this judicial reform effort has made in women's lives."

Although these efforts have made gender bias in the courts a focus for judicial reform nationwide, in many ways, NJEP's work has just begun. There is an inevitable forward and backward movement to our accomplishments because judicial and non-judicial court personnel turn over so rapidly. Many judges now on the bench were not exposed to the findings of the original gender bias task forces, most of which released their reports in the late eighties and early nineties. We cannot assume that gender bias will disappear as younger men and women come to the bench and bar. The information developed by these task forces demonstrates the complex and pervasive nature of gender bias in the courts and the need for a sustained effort to overcome it.

For more information or to purchase materials, contact the National Judicial Education Program, 395 Hudson Street, Fifth Floor, New York, NY 10014; 212-925-6635; Fax 212-226-1066; Email njep@nowldef.org;