by Joe Wilhelm Jr.
Staff Writer
Professionalism isn’t just a regional idea in the legal community. The Open World program illustrated how the idea spans the globe as foreign judges visited Jacksonville last week.
The Open World Leadership Center administers the program to allow visitors to see the system and structure of the U.S. government from the inside.
Five federal judges from the Republic of Tatarstan toured Jacksonville last week to examine the justice system and the practice of law in the U.S.
U.S. Congress founded the program in 1999 as an international exchange of ideas for key professions. Open World delegates range from first-time mayors to veteran journalists, from nonprofit directors to small-business advocates, and from political activists to high-court judges.
Since its beginning, 16,500 leaders from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan have had the opportunity to interact with their U.S. counterparts.
“The program provides a great opportunity for learning and examining the U.S. system,” said Konstanstin Kostin, an associate professor with the St. Petersburg State University of Service and Economics in Russia.
“The goal is for them to understand the system, and they have a lot of opportunities to get the information they need and ask questions,” he said.
The visiting judges, Evik Shaydullin, Irek Nabiyev, Rashik Fayzullin, Nailya Rakhmatullina and Nail Khayertdinov, who are federal judges in Tatarstan. had a full schedule during their stay in the U.S.
Those in the Open World program began their trip in Washington, D.C., and then split off to other cities, which included Jacksonville, Tampa and Norfolk, Va.
“It’s a great program,” said U.S. District Judge Harvey Schlesinger, who has participated as a host with the program for the last five years.
He said Jacksonville has been able to host people from Tatarstan for the past five years.
“The interesting thing about the program, in the time that we are in, is whether or not it will continue to be funded.”
Through hosting the judges from Tatarstan, Schlesinger is working to develop a sister court program between Tatarstan and the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.
Schlesinger served as the tour guide as the group visited the Florida Coastal School of Law, the Duval County Courthouse, the law firm of Holland & Knight, the Bryan Simpson U.S. Courthouse and the D. Ray James Prison in Folkston, Ga.
While at Florida Coastal, Tatarstan Judge Evik Shaydullin explained that students in Russia attend law school for five years so they can earn work experience during the last two years before they earn their degree.
Florida Coastal students explained that they participate in internships throughout their law school education and some would prefer the Russian system.
The stop at the federal courthouse included meetings with the U.S. Marshals Service, a U.S. probation officer and U.S. attorneys to discuss the grand jury system.
Through Open World, visitors experience programming in themes of interest to Congress and transnational impact, including human trafficking prevention, government and court transparency, nuclear proliferation and environmental protection.
The judges were actually able to experience an issue with court transparency during the U.S. Attorney’s Office presentation on the grand jury system on Wednesday.
The presentation was held in a grand jury room at the federal courthouse at the same time a grand jury investigation was being conducted on the same floor.
Because of the confidentiality of the grand jury process, access is restricted on that floor to only those people involved with the investigation, except for the visiting judges and the U.S. attorneys giving the presentation, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The policy prohibited media access to the presentation on the grand jury system.
The judges also received information on a trial by jury from American Board of Trial Advocates past Presidents Hugh Cotney and Mike O’Neal. Cotney explained the role of a plaintiff’s lawyer and O’Neal represented the defense attorney’s point of view.
The visiting judges were interested about how well-received the jury system was by employers whose workers are called away to jury duty.
“It depends. Some potential jurors can claim hardship if they work for a small company that has two or three employees. It can really hurt a small company to lose an employee for a week if the trial lasts that long,” said Schlesinger.
“There are also hardships for parents with small children,” he said.
Cotney and O’Neal also discussed the difficult process of selecting a jury.
“Sometimes you might be in court and you don’t like a single juror, so then you have to start thinking about the jurors that you don’t like the most, who really aren’t going to support your cause,” said Cotney.
O’Neal also discussed the use of a jury consultant, a person hired specifically to help an attorney develop a jury sympathetic to his case.
“We’ve got a lot going on up there when we are asking jurors’ questions and we can’t see everything,” said O’Neal.
“A reaction to a question. A rolling of the eyes by another juror. These are the things the consultant looks for to let me know if they are on our side or not,” he said.
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