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‘Any one of us, any day, could find our future in the hands of a judge. But can we trust our current system for making judges – and if not, why aren’t we doing more to change it?' Jessica draws on a decade’s experience of working for judges, with judges and as a judge herself to challenge our assumptions about where judges come from and how they prepare for the job. She invites us to look past the mystique of our inherited traditions and to recognise judging as a unique, and uniquely important, profession deserving greater scrutiny and support. Jessica is currently a PhD researcher and teacher in the University of Western Australia Law School, having made the move to Perth, Australia with her young family after a strange and wonderful stint as a criminal magistrate in the Seychelles. She trained as a lawyer in New Zealand and then at Yale Law School in the United States, and has always been fascinated by how little we know about how our judicial systems really work. This talk was inspired by an award-winning 3MT (Three Minute Thesis) competition presentation in 2019. From working behind the scenes alongside top judges and arguing cases before them in New Zealand, to sitting on the bench as a criminal magistrate in the Seychelles, to teaching young lawyers about courtroom ethics, Jessica has been fascinated by the role of judges in society for over a decade. She’s now a PhD candidate at the UWA Law School, researching the gaps in our current writing and thinking about judges and why we (should) trust them. In her TEDxUWA Choice Award-winning Three Minute Thesis (3MT) talk in 2019, Jessica asked how much we really know about what qualifies people to sit in judgment on us, and why we have to get past the taboo on talking about ‘judge school’. Research aside, Jessica is loving settling into Perth with her growing family and supporting the next generation of lawyers through her tutoring work at UWA. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
