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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
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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 organization 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
opening protocol and talking points, as well as an unscripted closing argument worksheet. The written materials alleviate any preparation time for the volunteer attorneys and ensure that the presentations focus on the most important legal points. When the groups reconvene in the courtroom, the student-attorneys present the arguments to the judge and student-jury. After presenting the arguments, the students, counseled by the volunteer lawyers, answer probing questions from the presiding judge.
Meanwhile, the student jurors are divided into two groups and are provided argument worksheets. The jury then deliberates, and each student is given an opportunity to speak. In a particularly forceful demonstration of the powers of persuasion, the student jurors are asked to begin the jury deliberations by sitting in the gallery section of the courtroom behind the party whom they initially favor. As the deliberations progress, students are urged to move between the two sections as their opinions change in response to points made by fellow jurors. This exercise encourages the jurors to think carefully about the arguments they are hearing and provides visible reinforcement of the power of civil, persuasive discourse.
When the time for deliberations has expired, the judge asks for a show of hands to represent the verdict. The judge may then ask one student juror from each side to explain the rationale of the verdict. Using their newly-developed civil discourse techniques, students attempt to convince one another of the subject’s guilt or innocence. Crucial to the mission is that everyone involved has an opportunity to use his or her voice to challenge ideas in a respectful and thoughtful manner.
CD3 is best-suited to the courtroom setting, where the forum lends its own solemnity to the proceedings. But it is also an adaptable program that transitioned seamlessly to a Zoom platform when in-person events were canceled due to the pandemic. While the judges look forward to returning to the courthouse, they recognize the advantages of an online forum to scale the program and make it available to schools that might not have the budget or time to transport students to courthouses.
It is clear that the judges’ hopes to reach teenagers and shape the way they handle difficult conversations and decisions are being realized. Unquestionably, the program has had an impact on the students who have attended. Students interviewed from Santaluces Community High School in Lantana, Fla., who have taken the CD3 program recognize that our leaders today have arguments rather than discussions. They see the same lack of civility among their peers and family members, and most of all, on social media. Students appreciate that social media platforms easily serve individuals who want to voice their strongly held, often impulsively drawn opinions, but also recognize that those platforms generally do not promote real, intellectual discussion.
Participating in the program, however, helped students understand that these methods that lack civility and real discourse do not achieve anything and only create further division in an already greatly divided world. To learn or accomplish something, high school senior Mason Benitez appreciates that you have to be “more open to hearing the other side.” She believes that acquiring the skill to see and then analyze both sides of an issue is important to achieving change. Natasha Torres-Parra, who took the program last year, agreed that you “have to keep an open mind; there’s not just one side to a story.” She reminds herself that different people may have different perspectives on the same issue.
From having a discussion with a parent to debating hot topics with an opponent, these high school students each approach conversations differently now. They know that to deepen their understanding of complicated issues, they can’t shut out what another person has to say. Participating in the CD3 program helped them gain skills to communicate civilly, constructively, and with an ear more open to learning from the other person. One high school junior plans to write letters to members of Congress regarding weighty topics like environmental crises, the IMF’s impact on third-world countries, and the currently debated stimulus package to Americans, and has decided on a new strategy after going through the CD3 program. He learned that to be persuasive and engage the recipients of his letters, he has to understand the issues from both sides and utilize reasoning from differing points of view to build his argument.
As far as teachers’ perspectives, Christopher Winkles, a teacher at Santaluces, thinks the program is fantastic for students. He has seen students take what they learned and what they heard in the program and apply it. He points to Natasha, in particular, as someone in whom he saw a turnaround. After completing the CD3 program, he witnessed Natasha start thinking “if I do this, then this will happen, but if I do that, then something else might happen.” In other words, she started thinking about consequences. Winkles has seen Natasha and his other students learn strategies for communicating more effectively and making better decisions—the exact kind of breakthrough that the judges hoped for when they devised CD3. In addition to learning from the program, students are also inspired by it. The program motivated one high school junior to want to study and then teach jurisprudence to students in a manner similar to the CD3 program, while senior Mason Benitez wants to study political science and economics. The program strengthened college student Torres-Parra’s desire to become a lawyer: she sees herself entering an imperfect system with hopes to make it better and to impact the world.
The students emerge from the experience with an appreciation for the criminal justice system, civil discourse, and oral advocacy, but they are not the only ones who leave feeling rewarded. Volunteer lawyer Courtney Cunningham, of J. Courtney Cunningham PLLC, had this to say after completing a CD3 program: “I benefited more from this experience than I put into it. The opportunity to work with kids who believe they can change the world through the courts was priceless.” Judge Rosenberg also observed that each program helps her learn more about the issues and the participants, but “also something about myself.”
An unexpected byproduct for lawyers who devote their time to the CD3 program is an opportunity to engage with judges as well as other lawyers, perhaps even adversaries, in a setting where the goal is singular: to foster civility and critical thinking in the students who have come to court that day. Professional networks expand and friendships develop naturally in this collaborative setting. It’s a feel-good learning experience for everyone, and, as a result, it is quite common for lawyers to volunteer for multiple CD3 programs throughout the year.
Clearly, Judge Bloom’s and Judge Rosenberg’s ideas, hard work, and blossoming program are making a favorable difference. Their goal—to expand the reach of the CD3 program to young people throughout the country—is already being realized. CD3 has been presented in nine districts and impacted the lives of over 1,700 stu-
