Judging as Judgment: Tying Judicial Education to Adjudication Theory

The thesis of this Article, simply stated, is that judicial education makes sense only against the backdrop of general ideas and beliefs about law, courts, and adjudication. These ideas and beliefs motivate a focus on educating judges and help guide more specific pedagogical choices. I explore this broad thesis from both a historical and a normative perspective. Historically, I argue that interest in judicial education caught fire in the 1960s in large part because of prevailing beliefs about law and the proper function of courts.

Normatively, I argue that the connection between judicial education and normative views of courts and adjudication continues to be important today, although in a different way. Judicial education has a vital role to play in engaging and testing different views of civil adjudication and its proper function. In particular, in-person, face-to-face instruction is valuable as a way for judges to reflect critically on principles that underlie American adjudication and to work out a shared conception of the institution that fits the core elements of litigation practice.