Racial Justice & the Courts

Moderator Hon. George W. Draper III
Justice, Supreme Court of Missouri
George Draper has been a justice of the Missouri Supreme Court since 2011 and served as Chief from 2019 to 2021. In his State of the Judiciary address to the Missouri General Assembly in 2020, he described himself as the great-grandson of a North Carolina slave girl and a Union soldier on his mother’s side, and a dark-skinned Black man from Florida and a third-generation German immigrant woman from New Jersey on his father’s side.

Jerry Kang
Distinguished Professor of Law and Distinguished Professor of Asian American Studies, UCLA School of Law
UCLA’s founding Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, Jerry Kang is considered a leading scholar on implicit bias and critical race studies. He also served as UCLA’s inaugural Korea Times – Hankook Ilbo Endowed Chair for Law and Korean American Studies from 2010 to 2020. 

Hon. Anne M. Burke
Chief Justice, Illinois Supreme Court
Anne Burke has been a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court since 2006 and Chief since 2019. A longtime advocate for children and disabled persons, she was a founder of the Special Olympics in 1968 and chaired the lay National Review Board of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which investigates accusations of clerical sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church.

Hon. Anita Josey-Herring
Chief Judge, Superior Court of the District of Columbia
In 1997, Anita Josey-Herring was appointed by President Clinton as an Associate Judge to the D.C. Superior Court. She became the Chief Judge in October 2020. Previously, as deputy director of the D.C. Public Defender Service, she supervised the Investigations Divisions, the Prisoner Rights Program, and the Criminal Justice Act Office, which is responsible for coordinating the appointment of counsel in all criminal cases.

Deanie Brown
Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, Illinois Supreme Court
In her current role, which she began in November 2020, attorney Deanie Brown is responsible for fostering diverse, equitable and inclusive leadership and staffing for the Illinois Judicial Branch. She previously served as associate chancellor, chief of staff, and director of HR and internal relations at universities in Illinois, California and New Orleans.

Eva Paterson
Co-founder and President, Equal Justice Society
A civil rights champion and litigator for more than four decades, Eva Jefferson Paterson leads the Equal Justice Society, whose mission is to transform the nation’s consciousness on race through law, social science and the arts. She is a frequent speaker and commentator on topics such as white supremacy, implicit bias and affirmative action, and she has appeared before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judicial Conference, among other groups. 

Victor D. Quintanilla
Professor of Law, Val Nolan Faculty Fellow, Indiana University Maurer School of Law
Victor Quintanilla’s research investigates civil justice and access to justice by drawing on theory and methods within the field of social psychology. At IU, he is also Co-Director of the Center for Law, Society & Culture and an Affiliated Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

• Beyond Common Sense: A Social Psychological Study of  IQBAL‘s Effect on Claims of Racial Discrimination
• Brief of Amici Curiae Social Science Experts, Race Equity Scholars, Law Professors and Civil Rights Entities in Support of Petitioners
• Doing Unrepresented Status: The Social Construction and Production of Pro Se Persons
  Amicus Brief RE Implicit Bias in DV and Child Custody Case
• Access to Counsel: Psychological Science Can Improve the Promise of Civil Rights Enforcement
• Implicit Bias, Behavioral Realism, and the Purposeful Intent Doctrine
  
• What Judges Can Do About Implicit Bias
• Yu v. ISU – PJC Amicus Brief FINAL