Court Review: Volume 43, Issue 2 – President’s Column

By the time you read this, Eileen Olds will have been busy working as the American Judges Association's president for some time. That means two things for me. First, I’ll no longer be on the treadmill-like travel schedule that accompanies that office. Second, I’ll be back at work as the editor of Court Review, getting its publication schedule back on track.

But before relinquishing this space, allow me a few moments to talk about the AJA and its work over the past year. Like most professional associations, our potential is hindered a bit by the one-year term of our leaders. My wife heads up the medical staff at a large hospital in Kansas City; they revised their leadership structure in the past two years so that the president of their staff could serve more than a year, thus better enabling long-term thinking and long-term projects. In the one-year term, a person starts to get the hang of the job and its possibilities right about the time it’s over.