Training judges requires careful planning in order to create programmes that are useful and interesting to judges.

Creating the infrastructure for training

• Determine the existing knowledge base through written questions or discussions with each level of judiciary.
• Create regular trainings on existing law and policy requirements.
• Establish and publicize trainings when new legislation is enacted and new policies are promulgated.
• Require participation in the training course for continued judicial license, if applicable.
• Plan separate training sessions for each level of the judiciary. In some very hierarchical contexts this is especially important, since judges may not participate in joint sessions with lower-level judicial staff.
• Place an introductory level version of the training in the judicial academy.
• Use a “train the trainers” approach to maximize results- core trainers can train more trainers or more judges.
• Use internet technology such as websites for sharing information and answering questions.
• Identify cases of gender-based violence as “specialized” cases for which judges must undergo training before being qualified to hear. Qualification, with attendant raise in pay, may result in more judges receiving training on these issues and less reluctance on the part of judges to receive training.
• Require training on gender-based violence issues for all court clerks and administrative personnel.

Tool: 

Terms of Reference: Consultant to develop a baseline (UN Women Southern Africa and Indian Ocean Islands Sub Regional Office, 2010). English. A UN Women programme sought a consultant to create a baseline of information on capacity needs, training modules, monitoring, and evaluation and recommendations in building capacity for judges and other legal professionals.

Develop objectives

Objectives articulate what participants will gain from the training. The content of the objectives will be elaborated in the curriculum. Publicize concise, current, and contextual objectives in your course registration and publicity materials so that judges can identify what they need to know or improve upon and will attend your training to gain this knowledge.

Once you have developed objectives, plan how to elaborate and illustrate them, using case studies, power points, role plays, lectures, and group discussions. Each segment of the curriculum should conclude with a concise reiteration of learning points. Strategies to develop the curriculum include:

• Involve members of relevant ministries such as women and family, interior, or security in the course planning.

• Obtain input from NGOs and service providers on course development. This will provide input from those who understand the issues relating to serving survivors of violence, and it will enhance trust between the judiciary and these groups.

• Obtain input from survivors in all training programmes, as they can best speak to survivor needs.

• Work to obtain adequate funding to create quality materials and hire experienced trainers and consultants.

• Field test training sessions on judicial representatives and incorporate their feedback.

• Obtain the approval of the highest level of the judiciary on the curriculum and publicize this approval to potential trainees.

• Regularly attend international or regional conferences on judicial training in order to learn best practices and new ideas to incorporate into the curriculum.

• Hold regular curriculum review sessions to ensure that content is still relevant and meeting objectives.

Creating a judicial educational programme plan:

1. Convene a meeting of key stakeholders. Include several judges, attorneys who practice in the area of violence against women, law enforcement personnel, mental health professionals, and experts on the topic to be addressed, for example, experts on the right to visitation in domestic abuse cases.
2. Brainstorm with these stakeholders and create a needs assessment on what judges need to know in the specific subject area. Cover all of the factors that a judge needs to know about the subject. This brainstorm can be done by telephone, e-mail, or in person. It is important to record all thoughts as this is extremely helpful in creating a programme.
3. Prioritize a list of topics created from the brainstorm. Some will be able to be subsumed under others.
4. Create achievable learning objectives. This will provide direction for the curriculum which is to be developed. For a sample summary of learning objectives, click here.
5. Create learning outcomes, or 5-8 key ideas which you want judges to know after an exercise. For example, you may want them to be able to identify the ways a batterer can continue to abuse an ex-spouse through the supervised visitation process by showing up when the ex-spouse is scheduled to be at the site. The key idea is that batterers can use the court-supervised visitation to stalk victims.
6. Create a learning module which is a bridge from the learning objective to the learning outcome. This is the structure of the curriculum.
7. Plan the curriculum around the functions of a judge: to do fact-finding and make decisions. Base your exercises on these functions. For example, after a lecture on the dynamics of violence against women, plan an exercise on fact-finding and an exercise on issuing a decision in a case of gender-based violence.
8. Make the exercise concrete and relevant to their experience i.e., level of judiciary. Abstract lectures alone will not suffice. Work from real-life cases. Present these to judges, ask them how they would rule, and then give them a mini-lecture to drive home the point.
9. Principles of adult learning emphasize that adults must internalize the information and make it their own in order to retain it. Therefore, structure interactive exercises as follows: 

• Present the information.
• Give the judges an opportunity to work out the problem as a group.
• Give them some confirming points to think about, including suggestions for best practices.
• Do not tell them what to do; give them a chance to work the issue out with each other first. Often the points you want to make will be made for you by their peers in the room, which is very powerful.

10. Use a variety of types of exercises such as role plays, lectures, Q & A sessions, and small or large group case exercises.

11. Always employ a judge to deliver any “live” presentations, including exercises and lectures. Judges learn best from their peers. For example, even if an expert on child development is speaking, it is important to have a judge make the introductory and concluding points that support the words of the speaker. Team teaching is an important part of judicial training.

12.Begin the session with an exercise that combines intellect with empathy: for example, ask the judges to assume the role of a battered woman. Give them a series of incidents that occur in her life that they must react to as if they were that woman. Require them to make the decisions in silence, and to indicate their decisions by walking around the room to various stations: apartment, shelter, homeless shelter, school, etc., in response to succeeding circumstances announced by the trainer. The point of the exercise is to give the judges a chance to think about the real experiences of victims so that they will make better decisions about her safety. Another exercise would show the experiences a victim might have when entering court, depending on how court clerks treat them, what happens when the abuser enters the courtroom, the importance of judicial demeanor, etc. The point of the exercise is to lessen the chance that a victim will be re-victimized by a judge.

13. Always debrief the judges after a session of role-play. Allow them a chance to talk about their feelings and the challenges these situations present in real life. It is very important to ask them: How does this apply to your role as a judge? Judges may say that they never before realized what victims endure.

14. At the end of the training, ask the judges what is the most important thing they learned at the training and what they will do differently now that they have learned that.

15. After the training, give the judges a checklist to take away. They generally don’t have time to read more. They will use this checklist as a tool, like a bench guide.

Evaluation strategies:

• Use a pre-session questionnaire to evaluate the level of knowledge of the participants. Use the knowledge you gain from this in programme planning.
• Ask the judges to evaluate each session of the programme in a brief form before they leave the room.

• Six months after the training, send the judges a brief survey (ideally online). Link the pre-session evaluation questionnaire, the evaluation done at the end of the session, and the post-session final survey by an identification number so that you can see how each individual has progressed.

Source: Jennifer White, Attorney for Legal Programs, Family Violence Prevention Program, USA (Interview, November 18, 2010).

Other classroom strategies:

• Provide examples that are tailored to the context of each level of the judiciary.

• Provide materials for use outside the classroom in checklist form for ease of use.

• Expect that traditional beliefs may impede progress until trainees are convinced of the importance of the training mission.

• Provide advanced training after trainees take basic course levels (UNFPA, 2008).

Foundation for content-related strategies

The following strategies establish a foundation for all judicial trainings on violence against women:

• Convey message that all violence is unacceptable.

• Educate on message of gender equality. Incorporate social context training into all judicial training programmes. Judges should be aware of the systemic inequality faced by women.

• Make connection between a fair and approachable court and improved reporting rates of violence.

• Make connection between sanctions and a culture of accountability.

• Train on victim psychology and the dynamics of domestic violence. See: Sexual Assault section and Domestic Violence sections of Knowledge Module on Legislation.

• Require diversity and sensitivity training to complement training on laws. For example, see the Jurisprudence of Equality Program by The International Association of Women Judges.

• Train judges to apply international standards and laws in domestic cases to further gender justice.

Tips for training judges  

Strategies to increase judicial attendance:

• Partner with national judicial councils for logistics, marketing plans, and expertise.
• Partner with government departments and ministries with expertise in the subject area.
• Partner with funders of judicial training to obtain funding for judges to attend.
• Publicize programmes through gatekeepers for judicial attendance, such as court administrators.
• Offer to assist specific judges to obtain funding to attend trainings.
• Build relationships with key judges and ask them to encourage their peers to attend trainings.
• Offer judges credit for continuing education for each session. Give them a certificate after the session that they can show the court administrator.
• If judges object to attending trainings on violence against women because it might make them appear biased in favor of victims, provide relevant links to Model Codes on Ethics for their country. For example, the American Bar Association Model Code on Judicial Conduct supports judicial attendance at subject-specific conferences.
• Offer trainings of differing lengths: 3-day introductory seminars, shorter advanced sessions, or one-day roundtables with several experts on emerging issues in violence against women, such as batterer intervention programmes or custody issues.

Judicial training should focus on both criminal and civil cases, and should be mandatory for judges in a variety of legal settings including those handling family law matters, immigration, and employment issues. Although violence against women cases are often criminal in nature, civil law is frequently involved. In certain countries, sexual harassment cases are almost all civil in nature. Domestic violence and dowry violence cases also involve significant civil components, including protective orders, divorce, and custody issues. Trafficking cases often involve separate immigration proceedings. Judges, prosecutors, and other court personnel in all of these areas need specialized training.

Training on New Legislation

When new legislation is passed, judicial training should be implemented directly in concert with all judicial system actors. The following example from Albania illustrates a strategy for training stakeholders to implement a new law.

Trainings Should Become Part of Regular Curriculum

Training Should Begin in Law School

 Tools:

In Her Shoes: Living with Domestic Violence (Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence). Simulation tool in which participants move, do, think, and experience the lives of battered women; for community and professional groups. English and Spanish.

In Her Shoes:  Economic Justice Edition (Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence). Available in English.

In Their Shoes: Teens and Dating Violence (Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence). Available in English. 

Walking Wisdom (Sakshi NGO, India) English. A toolkit with several visual tools on transforming judges and judicial education. Some of the topics include: Understanding Women’s Reality, Impact of Inequality, Myths and Stereotypes, and Judicial Perceptions. Uses real-life situations to illustrate tools for fair decision making. To order contact sakshipaths@yahoo.com 

Guia de capacitación para operadores y operadoras de justicia: Género, acceso a la justicia y violencia contra las mujeres (CLADEM, 2008). Spanish. This training guide is composed of three units. Each one contains a presentation of the principles and the essential concepts. It includes texts and audiovisual content which:

• Raise awareness about domestic violence, human rights of women, and the lack of reporting.
• Reflect on the international and national normative framework on matters of domestic violence and its practical application in the administration of justice.
• Promote the appropriate application of the specific legislation to concrete cases of violence as the principal means for the construction of a world more just, egalitarian, and equitable.

Manual for a Three Days Training for Media, Legal, and Education (Christian Empowerment and Sustainable Program, 2008). Designed for use with key sectors, including the justice sector, to inform its response to gender-based violence, sexual exploitation, and abuse issues in Liberia. Available in English.

Civil Protection Orders: A Guide For Improving Practice (National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, USA, 2010). English. Provides guidance for advocates, attorneys, judges, law enforcement personnel, and prosecutors to help ensure that protection orders are effectively issued, served, and enforced.

A Judicial Guide to Child Safety in Custody Cases (National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, 2009). English. Child custody cases involving abuse have complicated issues of safety and access. The Judicial Guide contains 14 bench cards for judges in child custody cases, as well as a supplemental guide which provides additional information about in- and out-of-court behaviours, best interests of the child, and order issuance and enforcement.

A Guide for Effective Issuance & Enforcement of Protection Orders (National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, USA, 2005). English. Gives communities and professionals precise tools and strategies to broaden the effectiveness of protection orders. Contains a section on Data Systems and State Registries.

Navigating Custody & Visitation Evaluations in Cases With Domestic Violence: A Judge’s Guide (Dalton et al., 2006). English. Some US judges rely on professional custody evaluators to inform their decisions on child custody and visitation issues. This tool helps judges to interpret and act on these evaluations when domestic violence is involved in family law cases. It includes four bench cards and supplementary materials.