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Education,
Training, and Development
What
This Core Competency Is and Why It Is Important
 Curriculum
Guidelines
Context and Vision
Resource
Development Adult
Education Fundamentals Program
Management Evaluation
Education,
Training, and Development can help courts improve court and justice system
performance and achieve their preferred future.
To understand what this entails, a paradox must be kept whole.
That is, the judiciary must maintain the rule of law through
enduring principles and predictable processes while also responding to
powerful forces shaping both society and the judiciary.
The
end is excellent court and justice system performance. One means to this is the education, training, and development
of judges and court staff, especially those in and aspiring to leadership
positions, and many others both inside and outside the court.
Thus the term judicial branch education as opposed to judicial
education.
Because
judicial branch education helps courts maintain balance between the forces
of change and enduring principles and predictable processes, it cannot be
remedial and limited to training. Rather
it is strategic and involves education, training, and development.
Court
leaders who oversee, fund, plan, and deliver judicial branch education
identified the forces that will shape society and challenge the judiciary
through the year 2020 during the 1999 National Symposium on the Future of
Judicial Branch Education. The
symposium results were published by the Michigan State University based
Judicial Education Reference, Information, Technical Transfer (JERITT)
project. With some
modifications, the forces identified in the JERITT publication and their
implications are:
-
Demographics
and population shifts: By
2050, or perhaps even sooner, there will be no dominant racial or
ethic group in America. The
impact of global interdependency and needed multi-cultural competency
extends far past interpretation and translation to the very heart of
Anglo-American jurisprudence. Education,
especially for experienced professionals, should challenge learners to
take account of the demographics and population shifts challenging the
judiciary.
-
Science:
DNA, cloning, surrogate parenting, and genetic engineering --
to name a few -- present novel legal, moral, ethical, and
operational challenges.
-
Technology:
The American economy has evolved from an industrial to an
information base. Court
customers expect on-time and accurate communication and information.
Private sector consumer service models and technology-based
“do it yourself" solutions have relevance for the judiciary and
judicial branch education. Court
employees increasingly work in electronic mediums as information
managers rather than in paper intensive environments as filing clerks.
With education and technology, they can add value through
informed and timely decisions and communication.
-
Resource
Limitations: At the very
best, public budgets will be stagnant.
Competition for talented staff will increase.
Talented staff must be identified and developed through
career-long and enlightened judicial branch education and human
resource practices.
-
Decreased
Public Satisfaction and Increased Public Expectations:
Both national and state surveys indicate that the public thinks
less of the judiciary than in the past, yet expects more from it. There are significant questions about the justice received by
the poor and people of color. A
national conference for state teams selected and led by the 50 state
chief justices identified, and NACM confirmed, that the number one
current and future issue on the national public trust and confidence
agenda is unequal treatment in the justice system.
Courts at all levels must address this issue in their judicial
branch education programs.
-
Self-Represented:
More and more people will come to the courts without lawyers.
The line between service and giving legal advice is
increasingly tested across all case types.
Appropriate responses require education, training, and
development of judges, staff, and others on whom the courts rely to do
justice.
-
Different
and Expanded Services: Courts
do not and clearly will not "just" resolve cases.
Effective justice and efficient case processing means problem
solving. Routine business
practice requires more than basic skills and on-the-job training.
Education is critical to needed collaboration with other
governmental entities and judicial and staff competence.
-
Resistance
to change: Even as the
above forces of change are acknowledged, courts and their leaders
often work to retain the courts’ traditional decision rules,
structure, and processes. They
do so when judicial independence or impartiality is or appears to be
threatened. Judicial
branch education must comprehend both enduring principles such as rule
of law, due process, equal protection, and independent and impartial
judicial decisions and the need for change.
To
meet these challenges, education, training, and development must be:
-
Continuous
and creative – responding both to traditional legal processes and
powerful and changing demands;
-
Inclusive
– ensuring that education, training, and development (judicial
branch education) happens in all trial courts and across the judiciary
and justice system and is delivered to a target audience that is
broader than judges and court staff;
-
Accessible
and tailored – requiring that personal and professional growth and
skill development opportunities are equally available and readily
available and affordable, in time and money; and that they consider
the background, experiences and needs of individual judges, staff, and
others on whom the courts depend;
-
Well-managed
– ensuring that judicial branch education for judges, staff, and
others is aligned with the court, its mission, vision, structure, and
workflows and that it is well-managed and built around sound adult
education methods and advanced technology.
-
Evaluated
– making sure that judicial branch education programs evolve in
response to the social context, needs for equitable access to
development opportunities, and assessments of their success in meeting
personal needs and organizational priorities.
Court
leaders must actively lead judicial branch education in their courts.
Education, Training, and Development are not pleasurable diversions
from daily routines, training for the sake of training, or a luxury.
Effective court leaders ensure that Education, Training, and
Development are recognized as essential and build a culture to support it.
This means excellence in programming; demonstrable results, both
inside and outside the courts; and reliable and consistent funding.
The
target audience is diverse in education, experience, professional
orientation, age, gender, and race. Courts
have employees who remain with the court their whole career.
They also have employees who come and go quickly.
When education and training and human resources are aligned, the
court is better able to identify, develop, and retain its best employees.
When talented staff leave the court, competent replacements take
their place or are recruited from the outside.
This ensures that the most promising people find job satisfaction
and acceptable career paths in specific trial courts and state court
systems or in the judicial administration profession generally.
While judicial branch education supports succession planning,
cross-jurisdictional movement of talented staff benefits all courts
through organizational learning across state, county, and court levels,
both state and federal. Whenever
possible, judges and staff should be educated and trained together.
This demonstrates that the judicial and justice system are
interdependent; the issues are systemic.
Beginning
in the late 1960s, NACM, the Institute for Court Management, and others
created a new profession--court management.
This early and continuing work prompted acceptance of a new
profession throughout the world. Inclusion
of judges, court mangers, and staff into this profession and its ethos of
service and justice is a profound objective of judicial branch education.
To
contribute to the development of individuals, courts, and the court
management profession, judicial branch education must: 1) span the career
of individuals, and not be limited to orientation or training to perform
specific tasks; 2) provide for significant interaction among program
participants; 3) include experienced professionals as faculty and in the
planning and evaluation process to ensure real and perceived problems are
addressed in every program; and 4) address a wide variety of topics, both
practical and theoretical. Through
programs that meet these criteria, courts are better able to become and
remain learning cultures. Education,
Training, and Development sustains enduring principles, maintains and
protects daily routines, and stimulates needed change.
Those in leadership positions set the vision and take
responsibility for the maintenance of the organization and its growth and
transformation. The bottom line is excellent trial court and justice
system performance.
View
the Summary
of Education, Training and Development Curriculum Guidelines or click on each of the
five Curriculum Guidelines to see the
associated Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:
Context and Vision
Resource
Development Adult
Education Fundamentals Program
Management Evaluation
Education,
Training and Development MSWord version for printing.
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Training and Development Adobe Acrobat 5.0 version for printing.
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