Welcome to the Posey Circuit Court
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Welcome to the Posey Circuit Court
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE HOW ON EARTH DID THAT JUDGE MAKE SUCH A DECISION!Gavel GamutMay 31, 2005 Mt. Vernon, Indiana The past three weeks this column has been about the invasion of Posey County by Confederate soldiers on November 8, 1862. Those articles were offered by me as a Director of the Posey County Historical Society and as part of my personal column, “Gavel Gamut”. I hope you have enjoyed these stories about our interesting local history and that you may wish to help the Historical Society preserve and promote Posey County’s rich history. If so, please contact the Society through our Director and Secretary Albert Gibbs at the Black Township Trustee Office, telephone number (812) 838-3851. And although I might prefer to have the readers assume someone other than myself were responsible for the contents of this and future columns, the thoughts herein are solely mine unless otherwise noted. Some of you may know that for several years I have served on the faculty of the National Judicial College located in Reno, Nevada. Judges from all 50 states and from many foreign countries attend this institution where America’s most sought after product, our system of justice, is taught by judges to judges. The National Judicial College has asked me to help teach several judges from Palestine in August of 2005. It has been my honor to work with Palestinian judges previously in 1998. I found them to be seeking the same thing we Americans are hoping for, justice. I found this same hope among other foreign judges when the National Judicial College, at the request of the foreign countries, sent me to Kiev, Ukraine in 2000 and to Moscow and Volgograd Russia in 2003 to teach their judges about America’s legal system. The Palestinian, Ukrainian, Russian and American judges are remarkably similar in their approach to their duties. Over the years the National Judicial College has identified several factors that are universal to good judicial decision making. The overarching goal of trial judges whether in Posey County or Palestine is the same: Do justice in the case in front of the judge based on the facts of that unique case and the law that must be applied regardless of who or what is involved. At the NJC judges are guided in this process to develop a standard approach to judicial decision making that can be modified as needed to the needs of any judge’s jurisdiction. Judges are taught to first analyze the pleadings and identify the issues in contention. Next, the relevant facts as disclosed by the admissible evidence must be carefully and completely determined. With a thorough understanding of the issues and the evidence, the judge must research the law to see how the specific legal system’s rules, statutes and codifications, regulations, executive orders, and in common law countries such as the United States, case precedents, apply to that evidence and those issues. Once this initial impression of what is fair, correct and legal is made by the trial judge, if the case is complicated, the NJC suggests the judge withhold making a quick decision while the entire case is ruminated on, often for several days. During this period, the trial judge is encouraged to return to the analysis frequently and with an open mind to the possibility of error by the judge in either fact finding, determination of the law or analysis of issues. If the case is still unclear to the trial judge, and with notice to and the permission of the parties and their attorneys, the judge may seek input from other judges who have no personal interest or bias in the case. This process allows the trial judge to test the decision against hard analysis from experienced professionals who will not hesitate to point out any errors in the judge’s preliminary decision. This general system of judicial decision making when consistently followed has been found by the NJC to serve trial judges, and more importantly the parties, well regardless of whether in Indiana or Russia. And, then, perhaps the people who disagree with an outcome in court will not have to wonder, why on Earth did that judge do that?
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