Education

Know Your State Government Day

Supreme Court Justice Thomas E. McHugh encouraged students attending a West Virginia Education Association event at the Capitol to visit the Supreme Court Chamber.

“It doesn’t belong to us members of the Court. It belongs to you,” he said.

Justice McHugh was one of four speakers at the “Know Your State Government Day” event at the West Virginia Culture Center. The others were Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin, House Speaker Richard Thompson, and Jim Spears, Chief of Staff to Governor Joe Manchin.

Justice McHugh talked about his background – his seventeen years as a Supreme Court justice and five years as Chief Justice – and the basic structure of the Judicial Branch of government.

He briefly compared his former time on the court to his more recent service.

“There’s much more activity at the court now than there used to be,” he said.

And he talked about the beauty of the Supreme Court Chamber designed by architect Cass Gilbert.

Justice McHugh passed out copies of a Supreme Court brochure designed for students to all those in attendance, and court staff gave packets of materials about the Supreme Court and the Judicial Branch to teachers. The teacher packets included copies of the Court’s DVD Foundation of Justice: The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, which Justice McHugh narrated.

West Virginia Law Adventure mock trials

Neither wind, nor sleet, nor snow (well, maybe snow) kept middle school students from performing their mock trial scripts in courthouses around West Virginia in February.

Although many mock trials had to be rescheduled – sometimes more than once – because of snow, most schools that had planned to make it to a courthouse to act out their scripts were able to do so.

The schools were participating in West Virginia Law Adventure, the Supreme Court’s mock trial program for middle schools that is now in its third year. The students wrote mock trial scripts themselves based on one of several criminal scenarios chosen by the Young Lawyers Section of The West Virginia State Bar.

Students were to mail their written scripts to the West Virginia State Bar by March 1, 2010. The Bar’s Young Lawyers Section will choose winners, and the winners will be invited to perform their mock trials at the Supreme Court on April 29. Students’ trips to the Supreme Court will be paid for by a grant from the West Virginia Bar Foundation.

Before mailing in their scripts, participating West Virginia classes were supposed to perform their trials at a courthouse in front of a judicial officer. The trips to the courthouses also were paid for with the grant from the West Virginia Bar Foundation.

Schools participating this year include Belington Middle School in Barbour County; Nuttall Middle School in Fayette County; Greenbrier Middle School in Greenbrier County; Moorefield Middle School in Hardy County; Horace Mann Middle School and Stonewall Jackson Middle School in Kanawha County; Bluefield Middle School and Princeton Middle School in Mercer County; Keyser Middle School in Mineral County; and Ritchie County Middle School in Ritchie County.

West Virginia Law Adventure is adapted with permission from the New Jersey State Bar Foundation’s original, award-winning Law Adventure Competition and Programs for grades seven and eight. For more information about the New Jersey State Bar Foundation, visit www.njsbf.org.

Judges speak at Boy Scout dinner

Ninth Judicial Circuit Judges Omar Aboulhosn and Derek Swope talked about their experiences as Eagle Scouts at an event on February 8, 2010, marking the one hundredth anniversary of the incorporation of the Boy Scouts of America.

The judges were two of the distinguished scouts who spoke at a dinner and annual Court of Honor at the First United Methodist Church in Princeton. The dinner to honor the approximately twenty-five boys who are members of Troop One, sponsored by the Methodist Men at the church.

Troop One is the oldest Boy Scout troop in Mercer County. It was founded in 1917, only ten years after the Boy Scouts of America was incorporated on February 8,1910, and a year after the national group was chartered by Congress in 1916. Troop One was briefly inactive in the late 1950s but has been continuously chartered since 1962. Judge Aboulhosn was a member of Troop One and earned his Eagle Badge in 1982.

“I know how important scouting was to me growing up, and I credit scouting for helping me to become a judge,” Judge Aboulhosn said. “Earning the Eagle Badge as a teenager helped to open many doors for me. I believe in the mission of the Boy Scouts so much that I still work in the Boy Scouts even though I do not have a son in scouting. Every opportunity that I have to speak about how scouting changed my life I will do so.”

Judge Swope said, “The Boy Scouts is a very important means for young men to learn valuable skills that will help them throughout life. This is particularly true when one arrives at the rank of Eagle Scout.”

Judge Swope said that while it’s good for all boys to be in scouts, the work it takes to earn the Eagle Badge teaches self-reliance, physical strength, and perseverance. “Those are lessons that will help you throughout your life,” Judge Swope said.

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