Judicial Training Methods

On 12-13 June 2014 the EJTN members, at the General Assembly in Thessaloniki, Greece, agreed to give life to a new Working Group (WG) devoted to “Judicial Training Methods” (JTM).

The opportunities leading to the creation of this new WG replied to the following requirements:

• The necessity to share good judicial training practices among justice professionals and set up a new approach towards the delivery of training and knowledge to EU judges and prosecutors, according to changing needs and priorities;
• The need to combine judicial training with the quality of justice;

Under the aegis of EJTN, the combined actions of its 3 Working Groups is concrete and self-evident, notwithstanding the specificities of each one of them: the WG “Exchange Programme” aims to favour exchanges (through a panoply of opportunities) of judges and prosecutors; the WG “Programmes” provides ad hoc-training actions in civil, criminal, linguistic and administrative justice cooperation at EU level.

AIM

The WG Judicial Training Methods can be read under the light of a “fil rouge” serving all these purposes, since its peculiarity lies in the creation of a proper environment for identification, research and dissemination of training tools. Its aim consists in proposing the most efficient and concrete training methodologies, applicable in all contexts.

Therefore, its contributions are polyhedric and transversal for any purposes of training tools development, by offering an actual reply to “training needs”, also through a wider recourse to E- tools.

KEY TOPICS

The WG JTM is organised according to three Topical Teams concerning the following key-areas:

• Leadership, with an aim to analyse and promote/exchange best practices in the framework of courts leaders’ training needs;
• Evaluation and Methodology, with its focus on the following:

- “evaluation and assessment” practices
- strengthening training practices and tools, through the development of new methodologies, more    apt to respond to EU judges and prosecutors training needs

• Judgecraft, with focuses on topics such as judicial conduct and ethics, judicial resilience, unconscious bias and the practice of judge craft skills in the courtroom, which forms the set of skills and abilities that are in common to all judges at every level, whatever their jurisdiction, across Europe.

ACHIEVEMENTS

In 2018, 208 participants took part in the events organised by WG JTM, as well as in the special meeting on projects with external funding.

EVENTS IN 2019

6-7 November	Prague, Czech Republic	Seminar on “Personal leadership”	TM/2019/08
2-3 December	Riga, Latvia	Seminar on "Judgecraft”	TM/2019/09

ANY QUESTIONS?

For any queries concerning the Judicial Training Methods activities, please contact the EJTN Secretariat: Benedetta Vermiglio: benedetta.vermiglio@ejtn.eu