Hon. Diane J. Humetewa, the first Native American woman and the first enrolled tribal member to serve as a U.S. federal judge, will deliver the 145th Justice Jackson Lecture on Oct. 18 at the headquarters of The National Judicial College in Reno, Nevada.
The public and media can stream the lecture live by registering in advance. Online attendance is limited to 300, so people are advised to register early.
Humetewa has served as a judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona since 2014. A member of the Hopi Tribe, she is considered a national expert on Native American legal issues and has instructed law enforcement and prosecutors on the topic.
The title of her Justice Jackson Lecture, which is presented twice each year during the College’s flagship General Jurisdiction course for newer trial judges, is, “Reposing the Public’s Special Trust and Confidence in Your Wisdom, Uprightness & Learning: A Discussion about Instilling and Maintaining Confidence in Our Courts.”
Polling suggests that trust in and approval of the nation’s highest court, the Supreme Court of the United States, remains at or near historic lows.
According to a Gallup poll taken in July of this year, a near-record low of 43 percent of Americans said they approved of the way the court was handling its job; 52 percent disapproved. Only 30 percent of people have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the Supreme Court, according to Gallup’s most recent Confidence in Institutions survey.
In the National Center for State Courts’ annual State of the State Courts poll for 2023, 61 percent said they have a great deal or some confidence in their state courts.
But the largest voting block, 48 percent, believed that their state’s courts were doing “not well” or “not at all well” in providing equal justice to all. And a clear majority, 61 percent, said the term “political” described their state’s courts well or very well.
Prior to Humetewa’s confirmation as a U.S. District Court judge, she served as special counsel to the president of Arizona State University. She previously taught at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and practiced federal Indian law.
She was a litigator in the Arizona United States Attorney’s Office from 1996 to 2009, and in 2007 was confirmed as the U.S. attorney for the District of Arizona.
She currently serves on the Judicial Conference of the United States Committee on Federal-State Jurisdiction and chairs the 9th Circuit Court Committee on Tribal-Native Relations. She is a graduate of the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and an alumni faculty member of The National Judicial College.
About the Justice Jackson Lecture
The Justice Jackson Lecture Series is named for Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, who also served as President Franklin Roosevelt’s attorney general and after World War II was America’s chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes trials.
Previous Jackson Lecturers include Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White, President George H. W. Bush, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Solicitor General Kenneth Starr, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Congressman Henry J. Hyde, UC Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, and NAACP Legal Defense Fund President and Director-Counsel Sherrilyn Ifill.
The lecture series is presented with support from Thomson Reuters.
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Created in 1963 at the recommendation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark, The National Judicial College remains the only educational institution in the United States that teaches courtroom skills to judges of all types from all over the country, Indian Country, and abroad. The categories of judges served by this nonprofit and nonpartisan institution, based in Reno, Nevada, since 1964, decide more than 95 percent of the cases in the United States.
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