By Quinton Lister, legal assistant
For those following along at home, you are aware that I have posted about judges before. Through the course of my current employment as a legal assistant, much has been learned about judges and their role in the legal system.
In family law, there are clear biases/stereotypes that exist. For example, a man who works full time cannot possibly be expected to comply with a 50/50 custody schedule, let alone be a sole custodian. Or, all a woman needs to do to get sole custody of her children is to claim she or her children have been abused. These biases have been brought to light before and they are not as strong as they used to be, but that is one of the difficult jobs of being a judge. A bias is the one thing that can seal the fate of a innocent party. It is of utmost importance for a judge to strive for impartiality.
How do we make sure that the judges appointed to the bench are genuinely impartial? I don’t know the answer to that question. I have a guess though. If we hold the judges accountable by shining more light (meaning being allowed to record and publicize) family law hearings that would no doubt help a judge think twice about their bias or acknowledge them more readily. More on that next week.
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