In the Legal Community
The Civil Discourse and Difficult Decisions Program: Bench and Bar Collaborating to Raise Awareness of Civility and Criminal Justice Among Young People By Margot Moss, Aron Raskas, and Erica Zaron
Margot Moss practices as a partner at Markus/Moss in Miami. She concentrates her practice on white collar criminal defense in state and federal courts around the country. Aron Raskas is a shareholder in the Business Litigation Practice at Gunster in Miami. He focuses on business disputes and the defense of professional liability matters. Erica Zaron practices in the Federal Section of the Miami-Dade County Attorney’s Office. She primarily defends civil rights cases on behalf of the county and its law enforcement officers.
“Person by person, act by act,” U.S. District Judges Beth Bloom and Robin Rosenberg are using their platform to raise awareness of civility and criminal justice among young people in their South Florida community. Five years ago, the two developed Civil Discourse and Difficult Decisions (CD3), a three-hour program for high school and college students that is administered at a federal courthouse. The program begins with an interactive questionnaire about the potential criminal consequences of common teenage behavior, then moves on to a judge-led discussion on techniques for improving civility, and culminates in the students participating in an attorney-guided simulated hearing where the students put their civility skills to use. While it may sound like a lot, the program runs itself. As Judge Bloom likes to say, “take one part student and one part lawyer, add judge and stir.” CD3 is then ready to go! (See sidebar) The concept for CD3 was borne of phenomena that both judges had experienced in their professional and personal lives. Judge Rosenberg was struck by a familiar refrain she would hear from criminal defendants appearing in front of her for sentencing: “I just made one mistake. If I could go back in time and do it over, I wouldn’t make that same mistake.” At the same time, she and Judge Bloom were both raising teenage children and were all too familiar with the way that civil discourse was degrading through the use of vanishing posts, the overabundance of emojis, and limitations on the numbers of characters that teenagers use to express themselves. They saw these problems as interrelated and set out to do something about the situation. Motivated by a dual desire to elevate the dialogue used by teens and to intercept young people before they make that “one mistake,” the judges put their heads together and developed CD3, an interactive program that any group of lawyers or bar organiza-
tion could easily implement with their local judiciary. In three short hours, CD3 pushes participants to confront, analyze, and process issues that will be critical to their day-to-day interactions as teenagers and adults. As the program materials suggest, students leave with “sharpened tools for civil discourse and decision-making and a heightened awareness of situations they may not realize can end with an appearance in federal court.” The program consists of several components. It begins with a “Reality Check Quiz” that presents students with real-life situations that could place them in criminal jeopardy if they were to take the wrong course of action. Then, the crown jewel of the experience is the simulated hearing, during which the students take opposing sides on a real and relatable issue. In one of the simulations, inspired by the Supreme Court’s opinion in Elonis v. U.S., the students debate the criminal implications of a jealous boyfriend’s threatening song lyrics.1 The arguments center on whether the messages can be prosecuted or should be protected as free speech. Part of the discussion focuses on whether the defendant’s use of winky-face and skull emojis modifies the meaning of his words. Finally, at the end of the program, the presiding judge engages in a dialogue with the students that helps them understand how important the decision-making process is and the potential criminal consequences that could flow from making poor choices. For the simulated hearing, the students are divided into three groups: one to represent the government, one to represent the defendant, and a third, larger group that serves as a jury. Two volunteer lawyers work with each attorney-group and use pre-written materials to help the students develop their arguments, with an emphasis on proper civil discussion techniques. The students representing the parties each receive a student-attorney folder comprising a scripted July/August 2021 • THE FEDERAL LAWYER • 19
