This year's Tom Slick Symposium on World Peace, scheduled for May 3-5 at the LBJ School, will take a comparative look at the steps being taken in Mexico and the United States to guarantee both the independence and the accountability of their respective justice systems.

The symposium, called "Independence and Accountability: Balancing Core Democratic Values in the Judiciaries of Mexico and the United States," will bring more than 100 leading judges, scholars, legal practitioners, and media representatives from both sides of the border to discuss some of the issues affecting the two countries' court systems.

Opening the event will be two keynote addresses, one by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Stephen Breyer and another by Sergio Salvador Aguirre-Anguiano, minister of the Supreme Court of Mexico. Their remarks will focus on some of the broad themes underlying the symposium, including the need for courts in both countries to be guaranteed their independence in making decisions while at the same time being held accountable for these decisions.

A general session called "Courts and the Media" will examine the inherent tensions between the courts and the media as they carry out their respective responsibilities. The panel, to include journalists and federal judges from both countries, will be moderated by Gary Hegstler, director of the National Center for Media and the Courts in Reno, Nevada, and Alejandro Junco de la Vega, publisher of La Reforma/El Norte/El Sol in Mexico City.

A series of breakout sessions will look at such topics as the election versus appointment of judges, the use of alternative dispute resolution, the education and training of judges, ethics and the courts, and the financial accountability of the judicial system. Each session will feature panelists from both the United States and Mexico and provide a balance of perspectives on the issues being discussed.

Among the scheduled speakers and panelists are Allen Weinstein, president and chief executive officer of the Center for Democracy in Washington, D.C.; Robert A. Stein, executive director and chief operating officer of the American Bar Association; Klaus Von Wobbeser, executive director of the Barra Mexicana de Abogados; Tom Phillips, chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court; Raul Aguilar-Maraboto, president of the Tribunal Superior de Justicia in Vera Cruz, Mexico; Ernest Borunda, dean of the National Judicial College in Reno, Nevada; and Julio Cesar Vasquez-Mellado, executive director of the Instituto de la Judicatura Federal in Mexico City.

The symposium is cosponsored by the LBJ School's Distinguished Visiting Tom Slick Professorship of World Peace (see related story), the Center for Democracy, the Latin American Legal Initiatives Council of the American Bar Association, and the U.S. Agency for International Development in collaboration with the Mexican Judicial Institute, the U.S. Federal Judicial Center, the Mexican Institute of Judicial Research, and the World Bank.

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May 14, 2001

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