Former Colorado Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Love Kourlis Speaks About American Legal System to Graduate Students

Rebecca Love Kourlis, who served on the Colorado Supreme Court from 1995 through 2006, spoke about the American legal system to a gathering of graduate students earlier this week.

Justice Kourlis told the students -- many of whom were foreign students now studying at DU -- about her own background, including her early years practicing law in Denver and in western Colorado and of her tenure from 1987 through 1994 as a Colorado State District Court judge. Then she shifted to explaining her current role as executive director for the DU-based Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, a national, non-partisan organization dedicated to improving the process and culture of the civil justice system.

For many students Justice Kourlis' remarks provided a new context in which to examine the American legal system. In this regard, she spoke about the work of the Institute as it relates to addressing the challenges for the legal system. In particular, she pointed to three primary reasons the Institute was established:

• As currently organized, the civil justice system is too focused on the needs of judges and not enough on the needs of "the users," that is to say those who appear before judges. "We are not running the justice system as well as we might from the standpoint of the users," she said.
• Confidence in the American legal system is "going the wrong way," she said. "People worry that they cannot afford to get in the system. We felt that was not acceptable; people need confidence they will be treated fairly and their experience in the system is affordable and predictable."
• How judges are selected, trained, and evaluated needs close attention if the integrity of the system is to be maintained she said.

Following those introductory remarks, Justice Kourlis took questions from the diverse group of graduate students (students from eight different countries attended the presentation). Among the questions the students asked related to the practice of attorney advertising in the U.S., the use of contingency fees, and how the jury system works from a judge's perspective. With respect to the last question, Justice Kourlis reflected on her years as a trial court judge when she presided over many jury trials. In particular, Justice Kourlis emphasized that "the jury system is a really important part of our democracy," noting that the jury system allows individual citizens to become more familiar with how the legal system works. Justice Kourlis also spoke of her support for cameras in courtrooms unless the case involves a juvenile.

The one hour meeting was marked by a great deal of curiosity on the students' part as well as Justice Kourlis' interest in how legal systems work in the foreign students' countries. Several students with whom I spoke afterwards voiced their appreciation that Justice Kourlis had made time to speak with them and had done so in a clear and understandable manner. They seemed particularly struck by the fact that an individual of Justice Kourlis' stature was interested in their countries' legal systems.

Justice Kourlis was accompanied by Pam Gagel, the Institute's assistant director and a 1985 graduate of the DU College of Law and an accomplished lawyer in her own right.

From my perspective, it was great to see the program's students listening to and learning from one of America's leading experts in the field of improving the justice system, no small task to be sure but a timely and key one to the foundation of America's legal system.