For Katherine Lucero, becoming a Yolo Superior Court judge means coming full circle. “This is a great honor, to be here in Yolo County where I was born, and to come back to serve you,” Lucero, officially sworn in Friday afternoon, told a courtroom filled with her family, court employees and fellow members of the bench.

The four South Bay students are part of Justice For All, a court-watching endeavor they started as freshmen and sophomores — Corbu at Evergreen Valley High, and the other three at Leland High — to get acclimated to what was going on in the halls of justice, or as is the case in San Jose, the Hall of Justice. The students are not merely watching.

Fifth graders at Rancho Santana School got a lesson in civics and the judicial system when San Benito County Superior Court Honorary Judge Omar Rodriguez visited their classroom on Sept. 17 to mark Constitution Day.

(Subscription required) A handful of states so far have successfully passed laws addressing transparency disclosures on employers’ use of artificial intelligence, and a subset of those also call for human oversight. The measures are intended to help prevent algorithmic discrimination and ensure data privacy protections. California’s legislative session gave the human-in-the-loop concept a significant boost, with an upfront mandate for human input.