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In 2002, the Royal School for Judges and Prosecutors, a part of the Royal Academy for Judicial Professionals (RAJP) located in Phnom Penh, was given the responsibility of educating Cambodia’s judges and prosecutors.
New judge and prosecutor training takes place in three phases. In the first phase which lasts eight months, the students receive classroom instruction in such core legal subjects as criminal law and procedure, civil law and procedure and family law, as well as a wide range of other topics. In the second phase, the students do a twelve-month internship in one of Cambodia’s municipal or provincial courts. In the third and final phase, which lasts four months, the students return to the academy to receive instruction in specialized areas of practice. At the end of the third phase the students take a final examination, the results of which are used to determine their first assignments.
In addition to training new judges and prosecutors, the RAJP bears a responsibility for providing continuing legal education for the approximately 230 judges and prosecutors actively working in Cambodia. Since Cambodia’s laws and legal infrastructure are undergoing massive change, and since many of Cambodia’s judges and prosecutors possess limited formal legal education, the need for such continuing legal education is great.
Student Judge Training
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H.E. Lim Voan instructs RAJP's
student judges
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In August 2006, PRAJ delivered an intensive land law course to the second intake class of student judges. Led by H.E. Lim Voan, Director of Cambodia’s General Department of Cadastre and Geography, and EWMI consultant Pat Baars, a PRAJ team of land law experts
presented the fundamentals
of Cambodia’s new Land Law Registration System. This is the system which was set up under the 2001 Land Law with the aim of providing a stable and reliable method of establishing land possession and ownership rights. The team of experts provided the student judges with a Land Law Bench Book created especially for the course, which included key legal texts, land law registration forms, and explanations of critical points of land law.
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Cambodian Supreme Court Judge
You Ottara delivers the new Ethics
module to student judges and
prosecutors at the RAJP
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Following upon the Land Law course, in September and October 2006, PRAJ/ABA experts delivered a skills-oriented course entitled, Legal Reasoning and Analysis to the student judges.
In 2007, PRAJ delivered Land Law and Ethics training modules to the approximately 50 student judges and prosecutors in the 2007 RAJP judge intake class. PRAJ then organized another ethics workshop for the new 55-member RAJP student judge intake class. The two local trainers were Choun Senleng and You Ottara, both Supreme Court judges, and both heavily involved in the development of the new judicial ethics code.
PRAJ has also worked with the RAJP administration on the distribution of an impact assessment questionnaire to each judge/prosecutor who had been through PRAJ-sponsored training. The RAJP recently sent the questionnaire to over 200 judges and prosecutors, and expects to receive the responses shortly.
Most recently, PRAJ developed and delivered a new land law training module for the RAJP. This module focused on advanced land law-related topics, and followed-up on material delivered in the previous year's training sessions.
Continuing Legal Education (CLE)
On November 29, 2006, PRAJ assisted the RAJP to present a "National Workshop on Continuing Legal Education for Cambodia's Judges and Prosecutors."
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National Workshop on
Continuing Legal Education presided
over by H.E. Sok An
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Deputy Prime Minister H.E. Sok An delivered the keynote address; USAID Mission Director Erin Soto also made remarks. The workshop brought together judges, prosecutors, government officials and members of the donor community to receive the results of the Judicial Training Needs Assessment Report, a report that summarized the results of a nationwide survey of Cambodian judges, prosecutors and other legal stakeholders conducted by RAJP and PRAJ in Spring 2006. Of the 150 people participating in the workshop, most were senior judges and prosecutors working in provincial courthouses around the country.
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PRAJ Chief of Party Herbert Bowman
presents the major findings of the
Judicial Training Needs Assessment
Reports |
During the workshop, PRAJ presented the major findings of the Judicial Training Needs Assessment Report, and explained the basic steps needed to build a nationwide continuing legal education (CLE) program. During the workshop, participants were given time to
discuss their own ideas for creating the nationwide CLE and to share these ideas with the organizers and participants.
PRAJ followed up on this workshop in January 2007, by assisting the RAJP to develop a first-of-its-kind, nationwide, CLE plan. The plan involves close donor
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Seak Vanna presents the advanced
land law workshop at RAJP
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cooperation, and the delivery of information to sitting judges and prosecutors in the form of training “blocks.” Under the plan,
virtually
every judge and prosecutor in the country received at least two one-week long blocks of training in 2007, with two or more international donors splitting the time available for instruction in each training block. PRAJ provided training on Land Law and Judicial Ethics throughout the year as part of this plan, teaching almost all of Cambodia's 275 judges. PRAJ is working with the same donor partners and the RAJP to develop and deliver CLE training to every Cambodian judge in 2008.
Click English or Khmer to download Judicial Training Needs Assessment Report
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