Todd: What does fairness mean to you and why is it so important in your work as a judge?
Judge Sanchez: That is a great question. It’s a big question. Let me start by saying that as a judge, I work in a courtroom and courts are a special place in our country. They’re a place where people go to resolve their conflicts and disagreements. And when I think of fairness in a courtroom, you know, in terms of doing my job, I think of a few different things. First, I think of fairness as giving people a chance to tell their side of the story, to let them feel heard and understood and that everyone has the same right in a courtroom to be able to express themselves and tell their story. And that’s the type of fairness that we think of as for the process of resolving disagreements. Fairness also can be thought of as relating to who is the one making the decision, the judge or the jury, and whether they are unbiased, meaning they don’t have an opinion or a preference for one side before they make their decisions. So fairness involves that decision-making process. And then the last thing that I think about in terms of fairness is in the outcome. I’ll give you an example. Suppose there are two kids that are disagreeing over who should have a cookie. And each one of them thinks that cookie belongs to me. If they came up with a process where one of the kids got to divide the cookie in half, and the other one got to choose that half of the cookie first. They might come away with it, both thinking that they got an equal half of the cookie and they’ll both feel satisfied. So there can be fairness in the way that things are resolved where both people feel good that they got something out of it. Those are aspects of fairness that come in my job. And I think that translates, you know, for kids and schools and everywhere else.
Todd Yeah. I love how you said, that we all just want to be heard and understood. I feel like that is a universal, that is what kids want, adults want. I really like how you phrased it like that.
On our episode about fairness that we recorded earlier, the kids helped two arguing Qook-a-lackas through a process of qook-a-lation. They listened to both sides of the argument, asked some questions, and then shared some ideas to help the Qook-a-lackas find a fair solution. Does that sound familiar?
Judge Sanchez: Very familiar. I heard the episode and I thought it was wonderful.
Todd: Thank you. Yeah, those kids were great. Could you tell our listeners what it’s like to be a judge in real life? What happens when you’re hearing a case?
Judge Sanchez: Well, many of the same things, believe it or not. It’s very important to be a good listener. In a courtroom, it’s important to take in the facts and what we call evidence and to not make a decision or make up your mind before you’ve heard all the evidence.
So it’s important for both sides to get to tell their side of the story as we talked about before and why they think that they should win or prevail. And for the judge or the jury, the decision maker at the end of the day to make up their minds and to ask important questions and resolve the dispute. Now, one thing I should add is I am an appellate judge. So there’s something a little bit different with that. In our country, we have three levels of court systems. There’s the trial courts that people are most used to seeing on TV where there’s a judge and a jury and it’s in a trial happens. Above that is the appellate court, which is where I sit. And then beyond that is the Supreme court. And the role of the appellate court is not to have trials, but to review what has happened in a trial and decide if there were any errors made and if anything else should be corrected or sent back. So one of the things about fairness is even if a person loses in a trial, they have the opportunity to appeal and come to our court and to make their arguments to see if they should win at a different level of review. And then finally, above me is the United States Supreme Court, and then they get to have the final say on these things. So part of my job as an appellate court judge is to have oral arguments and to listen to the attorneys talk about what happened in the trials below and whether anything should be correct based on that.
Todd: I see. Well, how do you make sure that you’re considering all the facts and reaching the fairest — you mentioned before unbiased — the most unbiased decision?
Judge Sanchez: At the Appellate court level, we have what’s called the record all the facts that came up in the trial and we have the briefs from the attorneys and they present their side of the story for their clients and we go through all of those details and At oral arguments we ask the questions of the lawyers so that we can get clarification. And what I try to do is keep an open mind about everything all the way until we file our opinions. I try to understand what is going on. I try to understand from the perspective of each side, what their view of the cases. And then at the end of the day, make up a decision based on what I think the law says and how it should apply. And then only until I hit send and we send those opinions to file is when I finally made up my mind completely. But until then, we try to keep an open mind until the very end.
Todd: That sounds hard sometimes to be unbiased. Why do rules matter when it comes to fairness and how do you decide if rules are fair or unfair?
Judge Sanchez: So we all have rules, whether it’s in school or with families or our government. And when our government creates rules, when it’s a legislature or Congress, we call those laws. And the reason why that’s important is because the rules are what we all decide in advance about how to behave together in society or in a family or at school. And the reason why that matters is when there are disagreements between people about things, about rights or whether someone was harmed by someone else. We want the judges to decide those disagreements based on the rules, based on the laws that are before us. We don’t want a judge to decide things just making it up on their own or just, know, I just, because I say so, we consider that arbitrary and we don’t want that to happen. So we want to have our decisions be based on something that we’ve already agreed upon beforehand. And those are the rules and laws. The second half of your question, how do I decide whether the rules are fair or not. It’s kind of a complicated question because in some ways judges don’t decide if the rules are fair. We let the legislature or Congress make the rules and then our job is to try to apply them and say which are the right rules that we should apply to this disagreement. Sometimes though, because we live in a country with a constitution that is above our laws, we have to decide if those laws that were passed violate our constitutional rights.
And in doing that, when we examine those issues, those are some instances where judges can decide if a rule is fair or not, you know, if it follows the requirements of the constitution for equality or other things like that.
Todd: Yeah. I was just thinking how rules change over time, can change. How have you ever had to make a tough decision as a judge or in life where being fair was really hard? And how did you figure out what the right thing to do was?
Judge Sanchez: Part of the job is sometimes deciding cases based on the law and what the facts say, even if I don’t want it to turn out that way. And that can be hard. There are certain cases where personally I might feel, man, I wish I could rule in a different way because I feel sorry for what’s happening to someone or where it may feel tough that they’re not going to win. the law is clear and it tells me that I have to decide a case in a certain way.
And one of the strengths of our court system is that we want judges to decide things based on those rules that we’ve talked about in a fair way and not based on our judges own personal preferences. And so sometimes that can mean that I won’t be happy about the decision that I have to make, but I have to make it anyway.
Todd: You know, in my classroom, we’ve been talking a lot about Martin Luther King, Jr., and talking about when we see things that are unfair of how we can have a responsibility as a citizen of the world to stand up for when we see something that’s unfair. And I’m wondering if you can share a story about a time when you saw someone stand up for fairness and make a big difference.
Judge Sanchez: One of my favorite moments as a lawyer was that I and other lawyers, you mentioned the farm workers. We sued the state of California to try to help protect farm workers who were suffering from heat. They were working on farms that didn’t provide them with enough shade or water. And many people were getting sick and some of them were even dying. And we wanted to make sure that the state was keeping up with its obligations to create better rules and more enforcement of those rules to protect those farm workers, those people that didn’t have a chance to be able to get out from under the hot sun, and to protect themselves when the temperatures got too high. And I’ll never forget driving into the central Valley in California where it gets very hot. And I was actually listening to a audio tape about the civil rights era and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And how those civil rights leaders went out into the communities and talked to people and tried to understand what their needs were and to help them. And it was very inspiring. And he has always been an inspirational figure for me and I thought about that as I was helping to try to do something for the farm workers.
Todd: Yeah, thanks for sharing that. What advice would you give kids about being fair, even when it’s hard?
Judge Sanchez: I think being fair is about giving people a chance to tell their own side of the story and being good listeners and not jumping to conclusions, but really thinking about how someone else might feel about something and try to understand their perspective. I don’t think fairness means that you get to have the outcome that you want. Fairness to me is not that you get to have what you wanted, but fairness is about trying to understand other people and seeing if you can meet them halfway, if you can come up with a solution that both of you can benefit from, or at least that even if you can’t do that, that the other person will understand that you tried and that you listened to them and you respected what they had to say even if you ended up disagreeing with them. That can be hard to have those conversations, but I think they will understand that you’re trying to be fair with them and they’re trying to be fair with you.
Todd: You’ve mentioned this a couple of times about being a good listener. And I think, you know, as an educator for young children, trying to model language to give children to have the confidence to stand up for themselves and express their needs and desires or their likes or their dislikes. But I think what’s almost more challenging and difficult is that that other person has to listen and so that’s the other part of it and being a good listener is sometimes even more challenging to teach and to do, quite frankly.
Judge Sanchez: I’ve learned this as I’ve gotten older over time is, one of the important things about listening is also remembering that you may not have the right answer. You may think you know what the right answer is, but sometimes by listening someone can teach you something and you can have a light bulb go off and say, I hadn’t thought about it that way. so listening gives you a chance to pause and say, am I really right about what I think is the right answer? And sometimes you may be, and sometimes you’re not. But the listening is also thinking that you don’t always have the answers.
Todd: How can kids help make the world a fairer place, even if they’re small, even if they’re young?
Judge Sanchez: I think kids can do so much. I think being fair and being respectful of each other can happen everywhere. If you’re on the playground and someone is being left out, or if someone feels like they’re not being heard, you can step up and say, wait a minute, let’s hear what they have to say about something. You can give other kids a chance to be able to say what’s on their mind, to help others listen to them and to give them a chance to have that perspective. We all can do that. And I think kids are sometimes the best ones to do it because they’re so honest and they tell you whether you want to hear it or not.
Todd: Yeah. And oftentimes seekers of justice, children, they really feel it when they feel something is unjust, either for themselves or for their friends. I see that a lot in my classroom of kids sticking up for other kids, not more so than themselves.
Judge Sanchez: I think kids develop a sense of justice really early on. It’s wonderful to see and it’s important.
Todd: When you were little, was there a moment when you learned about fairness in a way that has stuck with you?
Judge Sanchez: I do remember something. When I was in elementary school, my mom and I were living with my grandparents, this was in Los Angeles, and we were far away from the school that I was attending. And so we had moved to a closer neighborhood and we were living in the home of this woman who was wealthier and retired. And one day I was waiting to be picked up and everyone else had gotten picked up. And my mother arrived in our little tiny Toyota Corolla, stuffed with our belongings. And I didn’t know what was going on. And she was crying. And what I found out was that the person that we had been living with wanted to, she wanted my mom to pull me out of school to go on a trip to Europe. And my mom said, “We can’t do that. He’s in school.” And so she was fired. And so she lost her job and we got kicked out of our home that we were living in, in all in one fell swoop. And that has always stuck with me because I remembered how unfair that felt, and how helpless I felt at that moment. It was part of the reason why I think I wanted to become a lawyer and ultimately a judge to be able to give people a voice, to be a part of the legal system they give to protect their rights from something that felt unfair to give people a chance to block that sort of thing from happening. So that has always stuck with me and that was an early moment for me that I’ll never forget.
Todd: It sounds like you have a good heart. It’s probably a great quality in a judge. This is really my last question and I think it’s an important one is do you have any advice for kids who want to follow in your footsteps?
Judge Sanchez: I think my main advice is to be kind to others and to give people the benefit of the doubt. I think to be a judge means to give people a chance to convince you of something before you form an opinion about them. And so as long as you are willing to see what another person’s perspective might be, then it helps you understand maybe there was a disagreement or a misunderstanding, but that they are coming from the right place. And so I think that’s a good quality to have and to walk through, and of course being curious about learning things and enjoying learning because you have to learn a lot and study a lot to become a judge. But I think at the end of the day, maybe one of the most important aspects is giving each other that decency and belief in each other. I think lately we’ve let our differences pull each other apart a little bit. And I think differences can be a way for us to learn about one another and to grow together that way. So that would be the advice that I would give kids if they wanted to be a judge one day.
