Back to School

"It is a lonely, almost tragic thing to be made a judge and to be given no orientation in all the responsibilities that go with the job." This lament by Seattle Superior Court Judge Eugene Wright underscores the surprising fact that no U.S. law school or bar association has ever provided any training for present or future trial judges. When a lawyer is appointed or elected to the bench, he is terrifyingly on his own, and is expected to acquire the judicial craft by osmosis, or simply by virtue of his black robe.

Eastern Branch. Judge Wright and other faculty members (ten judges, two professors of law) have tried to remedy that lack at the National College of State Trial Judges on the Reno campus of the University of Nevada. The stu dent body consists of 96 recent recruits to the bench in 45 states; they range from a Philadelphia Negro judge to a jurist from Fairbanks, Alaska. First proposed in 1961 by Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark, the school has been financed by the W. K. Kellogg and Max C. Fleischmann foundations, may soon have an Eastern branch as well as the one at Reno.

The four-week course, which has been oversubscribed each year, combines the study of largely staff-written textbooks and probing seminars on hypothetical trial problems. In the primary text, The State Trial Judge's Book, a budding jurist is taught such crucial arts as how to determine whether evidence is relevant as well as admissible under the ever more complex rules of exclusion. As for deportment: "He should accept this change [from lawyer to judge] modestly, graciously and with dignity. He is not required to be a jolly good fellow nor to depreciate himself over his new lot." Judges old and new also study the ten judicial commandments composed by Chief Judge Edward J. Devitt of Minnesota's U.S. District Court, which range from the cautionary "Remember there are no Unimportant Cases" to the evangelical "Pray for Divine Guidance."

Friendly Hundreds. There are no exams, grades or attendance records at the school; the judges are expected to police themselves. Most are so elated by the shared experience that they talk shop from morning to night, whether in class or having a steak fry. The measure of what they are learning in Reno was summed up by one typically earnest student: "I never realized that other judges are facing the same problems that tortured me. Now I feel as if I have hundreds of friends around the country who are backing me up. They are people I could call on for advice."

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