Sin PerfilThe Judicial College Celebrates 25 years
On 26th February 1997, the ten women and fifteen men who made up the 48th year of Spanish judges began their classes at the Judicial College of the General Council of the Judiciary, officially opened just eight days before. A quarter of a century later, 3569 students, 65.6 per cent of them women, have studied at the College in Barcelona, in the heart of the Collserola mountain range.
The new Judicial College radically changed the way judges were trained by taking responsibility away from the Executive Branch and transferring it entirely to the CGPJ. This change made it possible to provide members of the Judicial Career and those aspiring to join it with training different from that of the other legal professions.
In the twenty-five years since that day, the dozens of men and women who have attended the Judicial School have strived to achieve the goal set out in Article 307.1 of the Organic Law of the Judiciary: “to provide Spanish judges with “comprehensive, specialised and high-quality training.”
Internships for Judges
The Statistical Data section provides information about the Judicial School’s most recent graduating year, the 72nd, as well as historical data since the Judicial College began in Barcelona.https://www.poderjudicial.es/cgpj/es/Temas/Escuela-Judicial/Formacion-Inicial/Estadisticas/
Induction Training: the Case Method
First, the candidates for the Judicial Career have to pass a competitive examination. Then they take a course that has three stages: a theoretical-practical multidisciplinary training programme, an internship period in different courts in all jurisdictions, and a final stage in which the trainee judges work as substitutes and reinforcements.
Some of the Judicial College’s methodologies have been recognised at the European level as best practices for judicial training. One of them is the case study using the Virtual Courtroom.
The Judicial College works on the premise that its role is not so much to convey knowledge that students are assumed to have already acquired but, above all, about how to apply it. For this reason, the case method forms the backbone of its teaching activity. It has been perfected to the point of developing three different variants:
Closed case: the work focuses on actual court cases already resolved in courts across Spain. The trainee judges prepare essays based on this material and the follow-up discussions. The goal is to be able to resolve the litigation by issuing a judgement. If necessary, students view a complete recording of the trial.
Sequenced case: Students a provided with the information in progressive steps. The first step consists of the type of documentation a person would take to their lawyer. The students use it to prepare the brief for a lawsuit, which they then compare with the actual lawsuit and progressively develop the case step by step. The practical usually lasts a week, and they pass sentence on the last day.
Open case: In close collaboration with different courts, some of the cases that come before them are streamed live to the Judicial College, which operates as a virtual courtroom. Students follow the proceedings and incidents during it and remotely attend the scheduled sessions, generally oral trials and preliminary hearings of ordinary trials. At the conclusion, they have to pronounce judgment with the same information available to the judge in the courtroom before the judge does so.
The Judicial College’s International Role
Since its creation, the Judicial College of the General Council of the Judiciary has had a strong international vocation. This vocation is reflected in its active participation in judicial training networks in the European Union, Latin America and the Arab world.
The College is a member of the European Judicial Training Network (EJTN), which brings together the judicial schools and organisations responsible for training judges in the member states of the European Union. It is also a member of the Ibero-American Network of Judicial Schools (RIAEJ), which brings together some thirty Ibero-American judicial schools and institutes for training judges and prosecutors, and the Euro-Arab Judicial Training Network (RFJEA).
The Judicial College is the main venue for the Aula Iberoamericana (Ibero-American Classroom), an initiative launched by the CGPJ at the request of the presidents of the Ibero-American Supreme Courts and Supreme Courts of Justice in 1997. Since then, 3724 magistrates, judges and other Ibero-American legal operators have participated in 149 activities as part of the programme.
25th Anniversary Events
The General Council of the Judiciary has organised various initiatives to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Judicial School, including the publication of a book published in bilingual Spanish-English and Spanish-Catalan editions, both available on its website www.poderjudicial.es in PDF format.
It has also produced an institutional video (viewable online) to promote the School. The college has carried out campaigns on social media like Twitter and Instagram on its institutional profiles @PoderJudicialEs and @Esc_Judicial with the hashtag #25aniversarioEscuelaJudicial.
Finally, on 25th March 2022, it held a ceremony at the Sant Pau Art Nouveau site in Barcelona to recognise all those who have served at the School over the past 25 years: directors, teachers and auxiliary & administrative staff.
During the event, the President of the Supreme Court and of the General Council of the Judiciary, Carlos Lesmes, highlighted the “unbreakable bond” between all members of the Spanish judiciary maintain with the Judicial College “because it’s much more than just a training centre for Spanish judges.” The College’s director, Jorge Jiménez, emphasised that the School is “an example of good practice for training worldwide” and “a great ambassador of the General Council of the Judiciary and our country.”
The recording of the commemorative event can be viewed at the following link: