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Winter 2001 | Spring 2002 |
 President's Message (Maile Bay)Second Redistricting Plan Approved (Jean Aoki)Judicial Independence Project Report (Jean Aoki, Jaurene Judy & Jackie Parnell)Hawaii Coalition Against Legalized Gambling (HCALG) (Dorothy Bobilin)Annual Fundraiser Nets SupportMembers who Love to TravelMahalo to the VolunteersWelcome New Board MemberFlorida Election Memorabilia on Auction BlockVoters, Candidates Flock to Democracy Net During Election 2001 (Bob Adams)Kauai League (Carol Bain)Trials of Charter Schools in Hawaii (Mary Anne Raywid)James Koshi |
Judicial Independence Project ReportWe start with the premise that judicial independence is important to maintaining the Judiciary as a co-equal part of the three branches of our government, and for the fair administration of justice by individual judges. In order for citizens to accept the importance of and need for judicial independence, we need to be convinced that we have a sound judicial system dedicated to equal access to justice and the fair adjudication of cases in accordance with the laws of our state and our nation. So we have devoted time to exploring our judicial system, its structure, the checks and balances put in place to identify and resolve problems, problems encountered in the past, and weaknesses and strengths perceived and real today. We are in the process of writing a final report to the National Project Manager. We do not have all of the information we need to include as yet; however the process of finalizing the report will reveal what other information we need to gather and we will proceed from there. We have interviewed members of commissions and boards, and individuals we feel have a broad understanding of our judiciary, its strengths and shortcomings. We will need to meet with the representatives of our partner organizations and discuss our findings. Following that, we need the help of the whole committee and our partners to plan the education campaign, beginning with preparation of a publication for public distribution and, we hope, a conference with some name speakers to attract as large an audience as we can. Hopefully, we will be ready with our publication for distribution at that time. We have managed to gather quite a bit of information from the newspaper micro-fiche collection at the library, information from the Supreme Court library, brochures, documents from the Judiciary Web Page, talks with individuals and commissions and committees, national publications, reprints of speeches, etc. You are all welcome to read all the material in our library. The report we're preparing for National is not the paper we plan to publish for distribution to the community. We haven't determined the format of the publication, but it would be written to inform and educate citizens on our judicial system as well as the importance of judicial independence to the proper functioning of this third branch of government. The report: Judicial Independence in Hawaii Jean Aoki |
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