The Center for Law and the Biosciences invites you to its biweekly(-ish) journal club lunch series, featuring delicious FREE Thai food and engaging discussion for all! Our speaker for November 12th is Natalie Salmanowitz, M.A., Fellow at the Stanford Program in Neuroscience and Society.

The presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial lie at the core of the United States justice system. While existing rules and practices serve to uphold these principles, the administration of justice is significantly compromised by a covert but influential factor: namely, implicit racial biases. These biases can lead to automatic associations between race and guilt, as well as impact the way in which judges and jurors interpret information throughout a trial. Despite the well-documented presence of implicit racial biases, few steps have been taken to ameliorate the problem in the courtroom setting. This talk will discuss the potential of virtual reality techniques to provide promising mitigation strategies in the near future. Should safe and effective means become available, Natalie will argue that virtual reality training paradigms would be both justifiable and morally obligatory for judges and jurors.