I N T E R V I E W continued from page 1 and the willingness to face new challenges. The Center has to be like that because the Judiciary is a changing institution. If the Center is going to serve the Judiciary, it has to change, too. It needs to be right up there, either a step ahead or in stride with what changes are taking place with judges and with staff.
Q:
In the past year the FJC has produced brochures on classified evidence and conducted post BAPCPA-programs, seminars on management skills, and eight major research and evaluation projects, along with many other projects and programs. What is the Center— a research center that educates, or an educational center that does research? We’re both. I knew the education side when I first became Director, because I had taught a lot of their seminars and went to a lot of their workshops. I had very little knowledge that it even had a research section. But the research is every bit as important as the education. It’s turned into the issues that are facing the Judiciary. When Congress has a problem or an interest in what’s going on in the Judiciary, they turn to the Judicial Conference committees and the committees turn to us, because we are their research arm. People trust us, which is a wonderful thing. They know that our research division is very professional, very neutral, and very informed because we are within the Judicial Branch. So the Center knows the turf and it can hit the ground running on an issue. How do you select what the Center will study?
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We don’t pick it out of the air. The topics come from the Conference committees. For
The Third Branch
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September 2008
example, our latest big project is on bankruptcy case weighting. That is vital because bankruptcy law has been changed and it is important to examine the caseloads of bankruptcy judges under the new statute. This project will be instrumental in determining the future number of bankruptcy judges. We did a study on the use of courtrooms. That request came from the Conference Committee on Court Administration and Case Management but it also involved the Judicial Resources Committee and the Committee on Space and Facilities. It was one of the largest and most complex studies that the Center has ever undertaken. The Committee on Federal-State Jurisdiction has asked us to do a training video, and we’ve also done research for them on death penalty habeas cases. We do some studies that aren’t really from the committees. For instance we’re re-doing the scientific reference manual—it straddles education and research—and that’s our own project.
Q:
How do you select educational programs for judges and court
staff?
A:
We have education advisory committees. The judges who are on those advisory committees are judges who have shown a real interest in education. They’re drawn from all over the country, to make sure we’re not missing something that one area of the country would want. For instance, the border districts always are interested in sentencing and immigration issues. The advisory committees help us plan our workshops. In addition, I go to all the circuit conferences and to as many of our workshops as I can. Judges are not shy. They come over to me and
Judge Barbara Rothstein, Director of the Federal Judicial Center
request workshops on various subjects. There are requests coming from a number of judges. So John Cooke and Bruce Clarke and I sit down and say, ‘OK. We can only afford this number of seminars. Which of the ones that people really have been asking for do we really need?’ With all of our educational programs we follow an instructional design approach—assessing needs, identifying goals, selecting the best means of meeting those needs—and involving our attendees in the learning process with vignettes, quizzes, role-playing and questions and answers in the lectures. The learning process works best when participants are actively engaged in a discussion, in solving a problem, or in making a decision.
Q:
How does the FJC make use of the Web and new media? The Center uses many distance learning and desktop learning methods to make its programs available. Our recently redesigned intranet site,
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