Catawba College will hold a public forum on the North Carolina judicial system and how the third branch of government works.

Titled “Court Is Now in Session: Reflections and Understanding the North Carolina Judicial System,” the hourlong forum will be at 7 p.m. Monday in the Superior Court room of the Rowan County Justice Center.

It will feature two former associate justices of the state Supreme Court.

The forum is scheduled a week before the justices of the Supreme Court will be in Salisbury for a rare court session outside Raleigh. That is scheduled for Sept. 30.

The forum, co-sponsored by Catawba College and the Rowan County Bar Association, will feature former Justices Robert Orr and Patricia Timmons-Goodson, who will share reflections and insights about the judicial system in preparation of the Supreme Court sessions. Michael Bitzer, the Leonard chairman of political science at Catawba College, will moderate.

Orr was elected to the Supreme Court in 1994 after having served as a judge on the state Court of Appeals. He retired in 2004 to direct the North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law and sought the Republican nomination for governor in 2008.

Timmons-Goodson is the first African American woman to sit on the state Supreme Court, having been appointed in 2006 and then elected that same year. She previously served as a District Court judge and on the Court of Appeals and is vice chairwoman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. She was President Barack Obama’s nominee for a U.S. District Court seat for the Eastern District of North Carolina in 2016.

A professor of politics and history at Catawba since 2002, Bitzer is a political analyst for several media sources and a prelaw adviser. He blogs about North Carolina politics at www.OldNorthStatePolitics.com, along with contributing two chapters on North Carolina for books on Southern politics. He has served as a media analysts for national and international outlets about the recent 9th Congressional District election.