LET’S call attention to the Philippine Judicial Academy (Philja). Republic Act 8557 institutionalized it as a “training school for justices, judges, court personnel, lawyers and aspirants to judicial posts.”
PhilJA is a separate but component unit of the Supreme Court (SC), and is the main instrument for the promotion of judicial education in the Philippines. Retired Justice Adolfo S. Azcuna heads the institution as chancellor, taking over in June 2009 from retired Justice Ameurfina A. Melencio-Herrera who was the first chancellor and held the post for 13 years.
Philja’s vision is “a Judiciary that is independent, competent, effective, ethical and accountable.” And its mission is to “provide opportunities to develop judicial competence, instill sound values, and form constructive attitudes in its continuing pursuit of judicial excellence.” If anybody wishes to have an idea of Philja’s full and filled-up calendar of activities, one can access the Philja web site. Read, for example, the Fourth Quarter 2014 summary report of the chancellor and you will note that the trainees include not just judges or prospective judges, but clerks of Court and sheriffs and process servers who, in many ways, can make the functioning of the courts effective or inefficient. They can be helpful or a malediction to both judge and litigants alike.
As this column has written before, judicial reform is an active, serious ongoing effort of the SC, and the private sector has been engaged in this effort through the networking reach of the judicial reform initiative, a coalition of business and professional organizations including the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines, the Management Association of the Philippines, Makati Business Club, Institute of Corporate Directors and the Foreign Chambers of Commerce.
These notes focus on judicial reform through a review of the Philja curriculum, to make it more responsive in addressing better the concerns of the business sector as stakeholders in the judicial system. Specifically, the question raised by Philja in a recent focus group discussion (FGD) with businessmen, was: How should its training programs be revised/formulated to improve the learning experience in judicial education in relation to emerging trends and technological advances?
Here are some of the specific suggestions from the FGD:
- Enhance the knowledge and dispute-resolution skills of judges in e-commerce; on intellectual property rights; on environmental laws; on cybercrimes; on mediation.
- Include in the curriculum the subject of “Understanding Human Beha-vior” or even refresh judges on Psychology 101, to make them more effective in pretrial mediation proceedings.
- “Court management” skills should be taught, honed and reinforced to move court proceedings faster.
- Teach judges how to delegate part of their work that can be delegated, to outsource certain tasks, and to take advantage of information-technology software available for organizing work, even for
assisting in research and decision writing.
The discussions revolved around perceived causes of delays in the court proceedings, noting that court decongestion was the primary objective of immediate reform—without forgetting corruption in the ranks. The attitude of the judge kept surfacing as the one critical factor in achieving reforms. But the group also pointed out that the curriculum should also be anticipatory, i.e., train judges on how to handle potential disputes arising from cross-border or transnational business transactions, especially with the forthcoming regime of an Asean Economic Community with integrated economies and financial markets.
Overall, the mini-forum stimulated and extracted a good supply of workable, relevant ideas. And we commend Azcuna for his initiative in bringing in the focus group together, for Ateneo Law School Dean Sedfrey M. Candelaria for acting as moderator, for Dr. George V. Carmona for facilitating the discussions, and for Judge Ma. Rowena M. San Pedro for ably summarizing the whole proceedings. All of them serve the Philja.
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The opinions expressed here are the views of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Finex. Free Enterprise is a rotating column of members of the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines appearing every Wednesday and Friday.
1 comment
The most common problem of the judiciary is corruption, corruption and corruption.