PROGRAMS FOR FOREIGN JUDICIAL OFFICIALS
The Center's statute directs it to work with other organizations to provide information about judicial administration to representatives of foreign judiciaries and to gather information about the administration of justice in other countries that may assist the Center's education and research functions. The Center provides briefings, information, publications, and technical assistance to foreign judiciaries, but does not pay travel or other direct costs of foreign judicial education programs.
In 2004, the Center
coordinated 46 briefings for approximately 290 foreign judges, court officials, and scholars from 66 countries;
hosted a delegation from the Supreme People's Court of the People's Republic of China and briefed them about the Center's work in the field of distance education;
participated in an orientation program on the U.S. judicial system for foreign L.L.M. students at Georgetown University Law Center;
met with judges and court officials from the Middle East, including Iraq, Israel, and Gaza; and
took part in the Second International Conference on the Training of the Judiciary, held in Ottawa, Canada, and attended by judges and judicial educators from over eighty countries.
Each year the Center hosts visiting foreign judicial fellows, for whom it provides office space, use of a computer, access to Center resources and staff, and guidance in preparing research projects. Fellows in 2004 were judges from Norway and Thailand, who studied international human rights law and court-annexed mediation programs, and a judge from Japan, who studied patent litigation.
Center staff provided technical assistance, including conference presentations, abroad in Argentina, Brazil, China, Ecuador, Jordan, Kosovo, South Korea, and Thailand. Funding for these projects was provided by U.S. government agencies, international organizations such as the Ford Foundation and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and host countries or organizations within them.