New
York State Judicial Institute Opens at Pace University School
of Law
Thirty
years ago, only 13 organizations were providing education to help
U.S. judges keep up with pressing social issues that had an impact
on their courts.
When it opened on the campus of Pace University’s law school in
White Plains, New York, the New York State Judicial Institute
became the latest sign of how much educational help judges are
getting now. It is one of at least 70 state and national organizations
in the U.S. offering at least 1,900 programs a year to more than
100,000 judicial branch employees.
The Institute is the nation’s first judicial training and research
facility custom built by and for a state court system.
It officially opened with remarks by New York State Chief Judge
Judith S. Kaye, Chief Administrative Judge Jonathan Lippman, New
York Lt. Gov. Mary Donohue, Solicitor General Caitlin J. Halligan,
the Institute’s Dean Robert G. M. Keating, Pace University President
David A. Caputo, and New York State Bar Association President
Lorraine Power Tharp.
A year-round “college for judges” and a judicial research center,
the JI provides seminars and workshops to help judges with “pressing
societal issues such as domestic violence, drug addiction, juvenile
crime and environmental abuses,” says New York State Chief Judge
Judith S. Kaye, a longtime advocate of such education.
White Plains was chosen as its location because it is convenient
to both New York City and Albany, with a downtown containing good
accommodations for visiting jurists. The Pace law school, founded
in 1976, already is ranked #3 in the nation for environmental
law programs.
The Institute’s dean, Robert G. M. Keating, is a widely respected
former Administrative Judge for the New York City Criminal Court
and more recently, Director of the Center for Judicial Studies
at the Pace law school. He has been a private attorney and business
executive and was Coordinator of Criminal Justice for New York
City Mayor Edward Koch.
The programs planned for the Institute’s first few months provide
a glimpse of what courts and judges must keep abreast of. It will
be covering the new integrated domestic violence courts, jury
trial innovations, drug court techniques, domestic violence, The
United Nations environmental program, litigation involving prison
reform, guardianships, and the human genome project.
In the future, Keating says the Institute will bring in judges
from countries abroad that are revising their civil systems to
make them more predictable for international businesses.#
Education
Update, Inc., P.O. Box 20005, New York, NY 10001.
Tel: (212) 481-5519. Fax: (212) 481-3919.Email: ednews1@aol.com.
All material is copyrighted and may not be printed without express
consent of the publisher. © 2003.
|