Judge Peggy Hora: Problem-Solving Judge

Improving People's Lives

Judge Peggy Hora is a therapeutic jurisprudence pioneer. She was chair of the committee which started the first drug treatment court in California, second in the country. Having retired from full-time judging in 2006, she now travels around the world as a teacher and leader in the field.

In Fall, 2009, Judge Hora was Thinker in Residence.
http://www.thinkers.sa.gov.au/phora.html

Her blog: http://peggyhora.wordpress.com/

Part 1: In Part 1, she talks about her path to the bench as a young mother doing homework with her children, legal aid staff attorney and managing attorney, and a new member of the bench. Her early days on the bench opened her eyes to addiction issues as the same people appeared before her time and again. She talks about how the intersection of the problem-solving approach, changes in attitudes about criminal law, greater openness about addiction issues and broader options in treatment led to rapid change in the legal system.

Part 2: Unpredictable growth that makes sense: There are now over 3,500 problem solving courts in the United States and the approach has spread to 20 countries. In this segment, Judge Hora talks about the flexibility of the model of problem-solving court and the elements of problem-solving courts. She talks about how the problem-solving courts have expanded to include domestic violence courts, mental health courts, veteran's courts, homeless courts, unified family courts, and child abuse and neglect courts with substance abuse issues.

Part 3: A New Way of Thinking, A New Quality of Justice

The lens of therapeutic jurisprudence as the basis of problem-solving courts, holistic law, restorative justice...by many names, a new role as judge and court, opens up new possibilities for judges. Judge Hora talks about her study which compared the job satisfaction for problem-solving courts and the typical adversarial system.

Part 4: The Next Challenge: How do we turn every court into a problem-solving court? How do we train judges? enroll lawyers?
How can the courts be part of the solutions for social problems? We haven't looked at courts as problem-solving holistic entities before. In Part 4, Judge Hora talks about the economic costs of the problems and how problem-solving courts can save communities money.