Continuing education is not something normally associated with being a federal judge, but because of the growing complexity of cases coming before them, many find it necessary to spend a lot of hours in classrooms in order to stay current. Otherwise, they will not be able to hear cases with sufficient knowledge and understanding to render justice.
It is not surprising, therefore, to learn that a lot of prominent institutions have for years provided courses for federal judges. One such institution is local — the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University. Others providing courses for judges include the Aspen Institute, the Einstein Institute, the Ford Foundation, Lewis & Clark College, the New York University School of Law, Princeton, Vanderbilt and the University of Virginia.
For reasons that simply don’t make much sense, however, the folks at George Mason are under attack by a local environmental advocacy group, the Community Rights Council in the District of Columbia. CRC recently made public its study claiming too many judges are being given free trips — i.e. junkets — under the guise of educational travel by special-interest groups seeking to influence court decisions.
Oddly enough, however, the two groups drawing most of CRC’s ire happen to be the George Mason program and the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE), which hosts seminars for judges at Montana State University. Also odd is the fact that both of these organizations are associated with conservative views of the law, economics, environmental concerns and other issues, which sometimes pits them against much of the conventional wisdom in academia, the mainstream media and other sectors of elite opinion-making.
CRC contends that judges should not attend classes held by the likes of George Mason and FREE and proposes banning all such continuing education programs offered by all groups for federal judges. Frankly, that sort of thinking has a whiff of intellectual book-burning to it.
George Mason is building a distinguished university with a law school that ought to make all Virginians proud. The Law and Economics Center is a key part of the building process, and because of the quality of the program, it should surprise no one that lots of federal judges want to take advantage of the courses. Similarly impressive is the FREE program, which has been audited three times in recent years and was highly praised by two former U.S. district attorneys appointed by President Clinton.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has proposed a bipartisan solution that establishes a $2 million Judicial Education Fund. That’s a good start, but whatever is eventually decided, let’s not cut judges off from the intellectual diversity and quality of programs like that offered at George Mason University’s Law and Economics Center.
