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The NJI refuses to allow lawyers, journalists and the general public to see its course contents

Trouble is, we just don’t know most of what judges are learning, because the NJI refuses to allow lawyers, journalists and the general public to see its course contents. That seems very wrong to many people, but numerous attempts to gain access have failed.

Like sexual-assault cases, custody decisions can literally make or break a parent’s or child’s life. Objective research in the social sciences increasingly concludes that fathers are of equal importance to children’s well-being, and that equal shared parenting (in the absence of abuse) is the optimal default for most post-separation arrangements. But, given the continuing disproportion of contested cases ending with mothers winning sole custody (less so in Quebec, where shared parenting is more likely), it is highly probable that Canadian family court judges are being trained with outdated or ideologically skewed materials.

Photo by Luke Hendry/Belleville Intelligencer/Postmedia News

That is something the public should know about. Unlike many branches of law, family court decisions are not a matter of following established procedures available through the study of rules of evidence in settled-fact scenarios. They require a sophisticated understanding of psychology and family dynamics. But study in these areas is rarely part of a family court judge’s background. So they are vulnerable to indoctrination.

Lack of transparency in judicial training is a problem in the U.S. as well.

Interestingly, last summer the Nebraska Supreme Court ordered the Nebraska State Court Administrator to disclose materials used to train judges in rulings on child-custody cases. The Court stated that confidentiality is an important consideration in judicial independence, but “it does not necessarily follow that all records created in the course of judicial education must be confidential to preserve this important function.”