Following the “Covid-19 and Rule of Law” Conference Cycle, which began last May and ended on June 29th, 2020, the general director of Esmat, who is also president of the Permanent College of Directors of State Schools of Judiciary (Copedem), Judge Marco Villas Boas participated on Thursday 25th, in an international digital dialogue regarding the readjustment of the Judiciary in view of the needs imposed by the global pandemic. The event is organized by the – Spport Project for the Consolidation of the Rule of Law – PACED and was attended by judicial authorities from the countries of Portugal, Mozambique, Angola and Brazil.
Mediated by the magistrate Marcelo Piragibe, special advisor to the National School of Magistracy – ENM and by the scientific consultant of PACED, Nuno Coelho, the digital dialogue was attended by the Director of the Center for Legal and Judicial Training (CFJJ) of Mozambique; the Director of the National Institute of Judicial Studies (INEJ) of Angola, Artur Gunza; from the JUdge of Law – administrator of the Digital Court and member of the reflection group on permanent training in the digital area of Portugal, João Ferreira; of the Director of the National School of Magistracy (ENM), Judge Caetano Levy Lopes.
For PACED organization, the adaptation of the international judiciary in view of the current conditions of social isolation imposed by the pandemic also brought about a readjustment and use of digital tools for interaction, exchange and dialogue. “That authentic metamorphosis also reached the judicial world with radical force, conditioning the ways of working, the procedures and the virtualization of procedural acts, even the conferences and the trial hearings that presuppose the physical presence of the subjects and the other procedural actors”.
Among the covered subjects during the webinar, there was the need for a quick adaptation of the judiciary to digital platforms as well as in the training processes. On the occasion, Judge Marco Villas Boas presented a chronological analysis of Esmat, within 10 years, which made the adaptation of classroom and stricto sensu graduate courses to be converted to the digital distance learning format as soon as the social distance was implemented in Tocantins. “It is necessary to have strategic planning. We have to think about it daily, so that episodes like that do not happen and catch us unprepared”, he argued.
Praised for his avant-garde stance as general director of Esmat in the search for adequacy and investments in knowledge transmission through technology, Judge Marco Villas Boas. “At this moment that we have to prepare ourselves to face the difficulties, we need to understand this whole process, to realize that those traditional ways of teaching and learning are being put in check. We need to reinvent ourselves, we have to renew ourselves”, he said.
