Thank you very much for inviting me to share with you my thoughts, as an outsider and a neighbour, on continuing judicial education and mentorship.  I also take this opportunity to salute you, the South African women judicial officers for celebrating the tenth anniversary of your existence as an organisation.  This is a highly commendable achievement.  Without an organized voice, you cannot achieve much to transform your judiciary into a representative, independent and impartial judicial arm.   It is also befitting that you are also simultaneously celebrating 20 years of your democracy in which women, just like men, played a significant part to bring it into being.
 
Most countries recognize the value of continuing judicial education ÔÇô and to a lesser extent, mentorship.┬á By mentorship, I refer to a system where a junior or recently appointed judges/judicial officers could be linked to senior and experienced judges who can hold their hand, so to speak, and engage them whenever necessary.
 
A mentor shares what she/he knows and lives, shares personal experiences with the mentee.  Mentoring is about having experienced it.  You cannot mentor anyone beyond who or where you are.    As a mentor, it is important that you know the aspiration of your mentee and direct them to excellence in the direction they have indicated.  Mentorship is training by doing.
 
The manner in which continuous judicial education is carried out differs from one jurisdiction to another.  In some countries, the approach is adhoc and or sporadic and the programme not scientifically organized or designed. 
 
The objectives of judicial education may also differ from one jurisdiction to another.  However, as a general rule, judicial education aims to reinforce impartiality, independence, efficiency and competency.  Efficiency of judicial officers is important.  It includes efficient judicial courtroom management.  In my country Botswana, it places the judge, not the lawyer, in charge of case management.  It encourages timely settlement of disputes.  Competency relates to knowledge of substantive and procedural laws.  Needless to say that it is not enough for a judge to be impartial, efficient, and competent. He or she should be effective in interpreting the law to achieve justice. This may be achieved among other things, by the use of judicially developed technique such as domestic application of international human rights norms.
 
The targets of judicial education varies from country to country.  Generally, the following are often the targets of judicial education:
a)   Aspirant judges
b)  Newly appointed judges
c)   Sitting judges
d)  Judicial support staff
 
In a number of commonwealth countries, training is offered to magistrates.  In Canada and United Kingdom, training is generally offered for all judicial officers.  Aspirant or pre-appointment training is generally rare, although it is offered in England and Wales to part-time judges.  In England and Wales, part-time work forms part of the criteria for appointment to judicial office.  In Italy, Germany, Portugal, and Spain, pre-appointment training is the norm.   In Uganda, a statutory body called the Law Development Center is in charge of judicial training.  It is chaired by a Supreme Court justice and gives a 9 months diploma course on the basis of substantive, procedural, evidentiary law and ethics.  In Kenya, they have the Judicial Training Institute that is headed by a judge of the High court. 
 
To achieve the objective of the judiciary attracting public confidence, it is much better to target all judicial officers ÔÇô not just the magistracy or new judges. This is so because even judges at the highest tier of the judiciary can benefit from judicial training.┬á For instance, in the area of HIV and the Law, judges as agents of justice need to be constantly capacitated with up-to-date knowledge and understanding of the science of HIV transmission, prevention, treatment, care and support.┬á They need to be constantly updated with epidemio-logical developments; and the evolving roles of the law and the judiciary in HIV responses.┬á This is equally true of many other disciplines.
 
At all times, the goals of continuous judicial education should be to maintain and improve the professional competency of all persons performing judicial functions, thereby enhancing the performance of the judicial system as a whole.
It is important that continuing judicial education should not be organized in a haphazard fashion.  It is crucial that it must be preceded by vigorous needs assessment or situational analysis involving key stakeholders.  A needs assessment will reveal the gaps/deficiencies in various levels of the judiciary that needs to be plagued.  A needs assessment exercise may reveal varying gaps in the following areas:
 
a)    Knowledge of relevant substantive law
b)   Knowledge of rules of procedure
c)    Knowledge of rules of evidence
d)   Factual analysis ability.
e)    Legal reasoning ability
f)     Judgment writing
g)┬á┬á ┬á┬áEthics ÔÇô Basic computer skills such as word processing┬á┬á┬á┬á┬á
   and using computer as research tool.
h)    Rendering rulings and decisions without undue delay.
i)      Maintaining appropriate control over proceedings.
j)      Even handed treatment of litigants and counsels
k)    Absence of bias/prejudice based on gender, race, etc.
 
Some authorities have suggested that continuing judicial education must be improved, by ensuring that it is State sponsored and mandatory.  It has been suggested, for instance, that all new judicial officers must be trained in certain key aspects of judicial behaviour and temperament in the conduct of court proceedings.  Examples that come to mind are courtesy to litigants, their lawyers and staff, patience, dignity and absence of arrogance to name but a few.
 
Having joined the bench from the academia, where research and continuous learning are highly valued and encouraged and having served the bench for over 10 years, I readily recommend and endorse continuous judicial education.  It is an imperative.
 
To be effective, it must be scientifically organized.  It must be compulsory and State sponsored.  Regular, well structural seminars are important.  In countries with no mentorship programmes, they can fill the void.  A combination of a scientifically organized judicial education and mentorship programme is what is needed to achieve delivery of quality justice.
 
It also appears to me that training or mentorship may take the form of exchange programmes in the SADC region where judges are regularly attached to other courts in the region.  We already have SADC Chief Justices Forum and operationalizing this idea should not be difficult.
 
The judiciary as a protector of human rights plays an important role in the lives of our people and in promoting the rule of law and access to justice.  Historically, jurisprudence has had positive transformative effect on the lives of many people especially the marginalized.  In a modern society, courts, literally everywhere in the world, find themselves grappling with difficult questions of human rights, insurance, finance and other branches of the law.  For the judges to be ahead of their game, so to speak, they need to be regularly capacitated about cutting edge jurisprudence in their areas of jurisdiction.  The simple truth that is incontrovertible is that judging, the analysis and conclusions a judge reaches are a function of knowledge. A country that pays lips service to continuously training its judicial officers will over time experience progressive decline of quality judgments to a point where the public will lose confidence in it.  This is already happening in some countries where litigants on account of little confidence in the courts are increasingly using private arbitration to resolve disputes.
*This is a paper given at the 10th Anniversary of the South African Chapter of the International Association of Women Judges
(SAC-IAWJ) at University of Pretoria on the 8 ÔÇô 10 August, 2014
