G1: Equitable, Accessible, and Affordable - Equity Principles Inspire Workable Technology Solutions
Inclusion, accessibility, usability, privacy, openness, and sharing best practices are some of the technological values that make up the Washington State Access to Justice Technology Principles. These principles were created to ensure that technology in the justice system reduces barriers, promotes better decision-making, and enables equal and fair access to our courts. Learn how these principles were developed and see how the digital inclusion folks in the Communities Connect network and the technology wizards at the Northwest Justice Project have applied them in innovative, cost-saving ways to connect people to the legal resources they need.
Takeaway 1: Participants will understand the Access to Justice (ATJ) Technology Principles, their potential impact on equitable and meaningful access to the justice system, and the essential role law librarians can play in making these principles real in the lives of all who are subject to the law.
Takeaway 2: Participants will be able to concretely apply the principles in their own libraries and legal communities to improve access to and the usability of legal information and services.
Takeaway 3: Participants will gain practical low-cost technology tips to creatively share their services and improve communications with their constituents.
Who should attend: Law librarians whose personal or professional interests include keeping abreast of standards for the accessibility and delivery of legal information; specifically, law librarians who are responsible for promoting their library's services to internal and external clients, who are interested in finding affordable and supportable ways to improve communications with their constituents, and who need to learn how to leverage community partnerships
Track(s): Library Management, Information Technology, Teaching, Reference, Research and Client Services
Judge Donald Horowitz has been active in the justice system since the late 1950’s and continues to be fully involved in efforts to improve the quality and delivery of justice to all persons.
In 2010, he received the Award of Merit from the Washington State Bar Association, its highest honor.
He received his B.A. from Columbia University in 1956, and his L.L.B. from Yale Law School in 1959. He has had many years in both private and public practice. and was a Senior Assistant Attorney General and first Chief Counsel for the State Department of Social and Health Services. His judicial service was as a King County, Washington Superior Court Judge.
He has been a leader in the development and use of technology in the justice system. He chaired the Washington State Access to Justice Technology Bill of Rights Committee, which resulted in the Washington State Supreme Court in December 2004 becoming the first court anywhere to adopt a set of fundamental principles to guide the development and use of technology in the justice system to assure that the use of technology doesn’t perpetuate or add barriers to equal and meaningful access to and use of the justice system, but instead eliminates or reduces barriers and affirmatively creates opportunities and pathways for more, easier, and better access to and delivery of quality justice for all. He has led the effort to transform those Principles into practical reality in the lives of all people. He has since led the effort to transform those Principles into practical reality in the lives of all people in Washington state, and elsewhere.
He continues to serve on the ATJ Board’s Technology Committee, and also serves on the ATJ Board’s Justice Without Barriers, and Leadership Committees.
In 2004, he organized and chaired a landmark national conference, “Technology, Values and the Justice System” to which an entire edition of the Washington Law Review was dedicated, and which generated a number of significant initiatives.
He initiated the idea for and worked with others to create a website to make assistive technology readily understood and available for persons with disabilities involved with the justice system, and those who represent or work with them, including the courts and court personnel, or participate as witnesses, jurors or in other capacities in legal or administrative proceedings.
He was for some years an adjunct professor at the University of Puget Sound (now Seattle University) Law School, and has lectured and given seminars at Harvard Law School, various schools of the University of Washington – including both its law school and its Information School, various schools at Seattle University, Gonzaga University Law School, the University of New Hampshire Law School, the University of Hawaii Law School, and a number of other colleges and universities.
Judge Horowitz has for over a decade served on advisory boards of the University of Washington Information School, including its senior Advisory Board. He has served on the Advisory Board of the Shidler Center for Law, Commerce and Technology at the University of Washington School of Law, and the Advisory Board of the King County, Washington Law Library. He currently serves on the National Board of the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, and was recently appointed to serve on the Advisory Board of the Washington State Center for Court Research.
Judge Horowitz is the author of numerous publications on the justice system and other legal issues. Included in these are a series in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer "The Legal Consumer - Faceless Before the Law", and the series "Let's Get Divorce Out of the Courts." His article, "Where Public Service and Self-Interest Meet", was published in the American Bar Association Journal, and a number of other articles on a variety of subjects including access to justice and technology, judicial sentencing, and barriers to work for released former offenders have been published in the Washington Law Review, the Justice System Journal, and other professional publications. Co-authored with Professor Popovsky of the UW Information School, his most recent article “Unintended Consequences: Digital Evidence in Our Legal System” was published in 2012 first in the IEEE Security and Privacy Journal, and later in the Washington State Bar News.
Other presentations include a speech to the Conference of Chief Justices of the United States on prisons and correctional reform.
Judge Horowitz serves as a Trustee of Seattle University, and is on its Academic Affairs Committee.