The contextualization of the educational process of magistrates in Brazil and in other Portuguese-speaking countries were themes debated on the last day of the "International Seminar on Lusophone Constitutional Law: historical context and current challenges in guaranteeing fundamental rights", promoted by the School of the Judges of the State of Rio de Janeiro (EMERJ). During the program, Justice Marco Villas Boas, president of the Permanent College of Directors of State Schools of Magistracy (COPEDEM) and General Director of the Superior School of the Judges of the State of Tocantins (ESMAT), spoke the lecture "The role of the magistracy schools in the dissemination of the Lusophone Law".
The hybrid event was attended by jurists from Brazil and other Portuguese-speaking countries, such as Angola, Green Cape, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Macau, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe, and East Timor. The closing ceremony was also attended by the President Director of the National School of the Magistracy, Justice Caetano Levi Lopes.
In his speech, Justice Marco Villas Boas emphasized the need for constant training of the magistrates for a better provision of justice. "Without the Judiciary all democratic principles are sidelined in the development process to serve the most diverse interests. Magistrates, in constant academic formation, know how to decide well, with reasoning and clarity, and with this there is social pacification", he argued.
About the evolutionary processes about academic education, the magistrate recalled the activities carried out from satellite transmission to the digitalization of the educational process. "We had initial difficulties despite the systems we had available from the Superior School of the Judges of the State of Tocantins, of distance learning, because at the time we still didn't have digital platforms that now exist pressed by the pandemic phenomenon that impacted humanity, led us to a social distancing and made digital tools like the ones we are using today proliferate. When we started the Distance Education, we needed satellite transmission, and this system, besides being expensive, depended on an adequate reception infrastructure in all the teleconference rooms in the districts", he stated.
The Justice highlighted the educational advances in light of the digital upgrade. "I see today the opportunity headed by Enfam, endorsed by Copedem, by the National School of Magistracy, by Emerj and all the other judicial and magistrature schools - a new perspective of rethinking this network of the magistrature schools and judicial academies - to provide the participation of courses, both here and in Africa, Asia, Portugal, to our Portuguese-speaking judges," he stressed.
About the Seminar
The Seminar is an initiative of the Permanent Forum of Constitutional, Administrative and Public Policy Studies Professor Miguel Lanzellotti Baldez, the Permanent Forum on Law in Lusophony, the Permanent Forum on Law and Racial Relations and the Permanent Forum on Domestic, Family and Gender Violence, together with the Center for Research in Comparative Law (NUPEDICOM) and the National School of Magistracy (ENM). The meeting took place in person at the Justice Paulo Roberto Leite Ventura Auditorium, with transmission via Zoom Platform and YouTube.
