Happy New Year from the Courts Journal! In the past few weeks, we learned the Lookout Mountain Drug Court celebrated Christmas with its participants and their children, and Judge T. Jackson Bedford spread Christmas cheer playing Santa at the USO of Georgia. The Legislative Session began on January 14 and the Capitol is full of people. Tracy Mason, our JC/AOC legislative director and her team are hard at work. The staff will be delivering copies of the JC/AOC annual report to all the legislators this week, and we just learned that the state of the Judiciary address will occur on February 19th in the House chambers.. The caseload reporting period for the Judicial Branch has also kicked off. The Georgia Commission on Child Support Final Report was released and videos from December’s Georgia Child Welfare Summit are available to view online. The AOC has created helpful infographics concerning the Civil Legal Assistance to Families Victimized by Domestic Violence grant and the accomplishments of our IT department.
The State Bar recently interviewed Chief Judge Dillard in the Georgia Bar Journal, containing some themes reminiscent of last year’s livestreamed panel: “Promoting Public Accessibility and Transparency in the Georgia Courts” with Judge Thompson, Chief Judge Dillard and Judge Wigington. The Bar Journal also contained a tribute to the late Chief Justice Hines. Troup County Juvenile Court Judge Michael Key wrote an essay questioning what doing justice really means. The 2018 Chief Justice Harold G. Clarke Award recipient was announced. We also learned about an Alliance for Lawyers and Rural America (AfLARA) on-line project.
We interviewed Judge Pham and JC/AOC staffer, Tajsha Dekine. Nominations for attorneys and case managers are still open for the 2019 Chief Justice Hines awards. Cobb County Juvenile Court recently published a success story with the State Bar. The Cold Case Project is now in its tenth year and will be releasing a series of success stories of its own from the past and present.
We have a new video archive project that we are doing in partnership with UGA Special Collections titled Meet your Judicial Council Members, where we’ll introduce you to the judges serving on Georgia’s judicial policymaking body. Meet our first participant, Judge McCord. It is also an opportunity to revisit our Judicial Council explainer video narrated by Chief Justice Melton and Court of Appeals Judge Doyle.
Talk to you in February
Your JC/AOC Courts Journal newsletter team: Michelle Barclay, Patricia Buonodono, Siarra Carr, Aimee Maxwell and Bruce Shaw