AUSTIN, Texas — The University of Texas at Austin and the Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM), will present a faculty development workshop for judicial educators in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, on June 13-14. The workshop, which is being presented in cooperation with the Consejo de la Judicatura of the State of Nuevo Leon, is designed to help judicial educators in the Mexican states of Nuevo Leon, Coahuila and Tamaulipas develop effective strategies for designing and teaching judicial education classes for state judges and judicial staff.
The workshop will be led by Dr. Louis Phillips, a continuing education consultant with extensive experience conducting judicial faculty development workshops in the United States and Eastern Europe. Eight of the judicial educators who complete the workshop will go on to present judicial education classes in four different areas: Judicial Ethics, Mediation, Judicial Time Management, and Use of New Technologies in the Courts. Expert advice in these areas will be provided by E. Janice Summer, J.D. ’76, Executive Director of the Law School’s Center for Public Policy Dispute Resolution, Judge Alex Hernandez of the Calhoun County Court at Law in Port Lavaca, Texas, Judge Robert A. Perkins, J.D. ’73, of the Travis County District Court, and Mollie Nichols, LL.M. ’02, J.D. ’86, B.A.’83, Director of Litigation Training at the Office of the Attorney General for the State of Texas.
The workshop represents an important step in the development of the “Strengthening Justice Through Judicial Training Project,” which was established by UT-Austin and ITESM in 2002 to promote judicial education in Mexico, said UT Law professor Patricia Hansen. As principal investigator, Hansen coordinates the project for UT-Austin with the assistance of project manager Lori M. Schroeder, LL.M. ’03, and special programs coordinator Steve Bell of UT’s International Office. The principal investigator at ITESM is Professor Marlon O. Lopez of ITESM’s law school faculty, assisted by current UT law student and Democracy Fellow Joseph Neugart.
Hansen said the project is an outgrowth of discussions on judicial education and training that began at the Law School during the 2001 Tom Slick Symposium on “Independence and Accountability: Balancing Core Democratic Values in the Judiciaries of Mexico and the United States.” The symposium brought together leading judges, scholars and legal practitioners from the United States and Mexico including Stephen G. Breyer, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and Mexican Supreme Court Minister Sergio Salvador Aguirre Anguiano.
“The project is intended to support democratic reforms in Mexico by providing judicial training and promoting judicial professionalism at the state court level in Mexico,” said Hansen. “Workshop participants will go on to design and teach pilot classes for state judges in the three states. It is hoped that these classes will form the basis for a long-term judicial training program to be taught across Mexico using distance learning techniques,” she said.
The project is funded by a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Association Liaison Office for University Cooperation in Development (ALO). The Texas Center for the Judiciary and the Texas Municipal Courts Education Center also provided assistance for the project.
The first day of the workshop will focus on a series of presentations by Dr. Phillips on how to design and present judicial education classes. On the second day, participants will prepare and deliver short presentations in their respective curricular areas. Each presentation will be the subject of discussion and critiques by the rest of the program participants, as well as by judicial and legal education experts from the United States. Following the completion of the workshop, eight of the 18 program participants will prepare and present classes on mediation, judicial ethics, judicial time management, and use of new technologies to state judges and judicial staff in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon.