yielded articles<\/a> that attest to shortcomings revolving around language barriers for defendants, racial disparities in who gets pretrial release, and the criminal justice system\u2019s general struggles with fairly addressing mental illness and the neurodivergent.<\/p>\n\u201cSpeech, debate, mock trial, and youth government don\u2019t fully touch on the real judicial system,\u201d Tadimeti said. \u201cA lot of what we\u2019ve observed in the system isn\u2019t something that\u2019s blatantly obvious that you could maybe claim would be unjust \u2026 I feel like the tone is really important: I\u2019ve been in instances where I\u2019ve heard the judge call a woman \u2018lady\u2019 multiple times in kind of an arrogant tone, which seems a little demeaning.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s all added up to a two-year crash course for the group.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt removed the fear and stigma of courtrooms, helped us pick up complex legal terminology, and exposed us to critical trial observations,\u201d Tadimeti said.<\/p>\n
Brett Hammon, a deputy public defender who specializes in litigation involving the Racial Justice Act \u2014 a 2021 law aimed at invalidating prosecutions provably tainted by bias \u2014 is credited with helping the students design the observation forms so they can uniformly chart their data. Besides noting their interest in equity issues, he said the sight of them in some courtrooms, sometimes as the only non-attorneys in the gallery, is invaluable.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust their presence in the courtroom is beneficial,\u201d Hammon said. \u201cIt just reminds everyone involved in the courtroom that there is a real public interest in ensuring fair treatment of the accused. Being a good civic person, to be able to consume and understand the news and current events, to know a little bit about the justice system \u2026 is also a huge plus.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not wanting to limit their efforts to their tight-knit group, the students registered Justice For All as a nonprofit organization. By leveraging a robust website and social media presence, they have helped other students in the Bay Area and beyond open up their own chapters.<\/p>\n
Justice For All now boasts a national network of over 350 students, extending as far as Dallas and New York City, with an internship program and more than 3,000 court cases under their purview. They have received commendations from the San Jose City Council and Congress, the latter via Rep. Sam Liccardo.<\/p>\n
Manral said the program embodies how students can affect things long before their prospective legal careers officially get going, something all four have voiced interest in pursuing.<\/p>\n
\u201cInjustices only happen in empty courtrooms,\u201d Manral said, citing a motto that has become a de facto mission statement for many court-watching organizations. \u201cNot only do (students) get to see the courtroom for themselves and dip their toe into the legal system, but in a worst-case scenario, if something egregiously bad happens in the courtroom, they\u2019re there to document it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think having a large audience does make a difference to the judge because they know that there\u2019s people watching them and they will be held accountable if something were to happen,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
![\"Evergreen](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/SJM-L-COURTWATCH-7.jpg\")
Evergreen Valley High School student Ariana Corbu, 17, second from left, and Leland High School students Ishani Manral, 17, far left, Apurva Tadimeti, 17, third from left, and Ian Gao, 17, right, leave the Hall of Justice after observing a court proceeding on Aug. 28, 2026, in San Jose, Calif. They are members of Justice For All, a student-led court-watching nonprofit that aspires to keep an eye on equity and fairness in everyday court proceedings. (Dai Sugano\/Bay Area News Group)\u00a0<\/p>\n
Raj Jayadev, director of the civil-rights group Silicon Valley De-Bug, a prominent court-watching outfit in the South Bay, was another mentor for the student founders and said he is heartened by their initiative.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s a really bold thing to do because courts are so intimidating. It doesn\u2019t really feel like your place unless you\u2019re a lawyer, or you have a court date, or you\u2019re a court actor,\u201d Jayadev said. \u201cTo have the courage to say, \u2018No, these are public institutions, I can be here,\u2019 to do that at their age when there are self-imposed limitations a lot of us have when we\u2019re younger \u2026 is a powerful instinct.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ramon welcomes the additional observation. He has taken an interest in the core four, and on multiple occasions after the court calendar has finished, holds an impromptu question-and-answer session with them. On that Friday afternoon in late August, he asked them to name their \u201cdream schools\u201d for college.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese courtrooms do not belong to the judges. They don\u2019t belong to the lawyers. They belong to you,\u201d Ramon told this news organization.<\/p>\n
Like other adults who have encountered student court-watchers, he sees them as a cause for optimism.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ll be able to imagine themselves \u2026 playing these roles, whether it be as an attorney or as a judge,\u201d Ramon said. \u201cIt demonstrates, besides their initiative, that there\u2019s a hunger throughout our country for this kind of engagement. Our young people are not folks that are just sitting at home on their computers, on their phones, disengaged. They actually want to get out there and do something that they consider important and useful.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Gao, he hopes that their work is as eye-opening for his peers as it has been for him, and points to how their program leverages the idea of strength in numbers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll be perfectly honest. I, like many people, did not know you\u2019re allowed to go to court. I grew up in China where it wasn\u2019t even conceivable that you could participate in the political system,\u201d he said. \u201cDoing it as a group makes it less daunting, and doing it more and more makes it less and less daunting. People are going to look at you a little weirdly, but then you realize when you sit down, you\u2019re just like everyone else, there to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN JOSE \u2013 Ariana Corbu sat in court recently, feverishly taking notes and filling out forms watching a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[18912,26654,191302,88,191300,90,89,103571,191301],"class_list":["post-490394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-high-school-students","tag-justice-for-all","tag-public-court-proceedings","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-court-watching","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-santa-clara-county-superior-court","tag-south-bay-students"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Evergreen](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/SJM-L-COURTWATCH-2.jpg\")
Evergreen Valley High School student Ariana Corbu, 17, fills out a note-taking template while observing a court proceeding at the Hall of Justice in San Jose, Calif., on Aug. 28, 2026. She is one of the co-founders of the student-led court watching group Justice for All. (Dai Sugano\/Bay Area News Group)\u00a0<\/p>\n