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February 2009 Vol. 19, No. 5 

E-SJI News    

FY 2009 2nd QUARTER APPLICATIONS 

AND STATUS OF APPROPRIATIONS 

SJI received 19 grant applications requesting a total of $674,701 for the 2nd quarter of FY 2009. The Board will 

meet on April 24, 2009, to make decisions on grant awards for the 2nd quarter. The results of this Board 

meeting will be available the following week. 

SJI is currently operating under a Continuing Resolution (CR) (P.L. 110-329) through March 6, 2009. While 

under a CR, the Board of Directors will approve new grant requests for FY 2009, but will not make any awards 

until SJI’s final appropriation is available.

On February 25, 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the FY 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act 

(H.R. 1105). The Omnibus includes $4.1 million for SJI in FY 2009; an increase of $340,000 over FY 2008. It 

is expected that the Senate will take up the Omnibus Bill next week. 

FEDERAL IMMIGRATION POLICY & THE STATE COURTS 

The Center for Public Policy Studies (CPPS), has recently released a document that includes essential questions 

and answers on federal immigration law/policy and the impact on state courts. Specifically, the Q&A document 

addresses: 1) the impact of state and local court actions have on the effectiveness of federal immigration policy; 

2) the impact of federal immigration law/policy on the state courts and other local justice agencies; 3) why it is 

difficult to get the immigrant composition of state and local court cases; 4) what the SJI Strategic Initiatives 

Grants (SIG) program is doing to help the state courts with immigration issues; and 5) the projected outputs 

from the SIG pilot sites. (continued on page 2) 

Strategic Planning Produces Significant 

Results for Two Michigan Courts 2

Inside

Federal Immigration Policy and 

the State Courts 1, 2

SJI Continues to Support Courts in 

the U.S. Territories 3, 4 
The document can be found on the SJI website: 

http://www.sji.gov/PDF/Federal_Immigration_Policy_and_the_State_Courts.pdf

SJI began using the Strategic Initiatives Grants (SIG) program in FY 2008 to address immigration issues in the 

courts at a national impact level. Two grants were awarded; one to the CPPS; and another to support a 

collaborative effort between the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) and the National Judicial College 

(NJC). 

STRATEGIC PLANNING PRODUCES SIGNIFICANT RESULTS 

FOR TWO MICHIGAN COURTS 

The 20th Circuit Court and Ottawa County, Michigan, Probate Court received initial funding from SJI in 2004 to 

begin a comprehensive strategic planning project. This project built on previous strategic planning efforts, to 

include the Visioning and Strategic Planning Core Competency Guidelines published by the National 

Association for Court Management (NACM). Since 2004, the two courts have remained focused on their 

strategic priorities, and have successfully implemented the strategic plan. A recent article in Court Manager

(Volume 23, Issue 2) describes the strategic planning experiences of these two courts, including a description of 

the planning and implementation processes they used, and lessons learned. With NACM’s permission, the 

article has also been made available on the SJI website: 

http://www.sji.gov/PDF/Strategic_Planning_20th_Circuit_Court_and_Ottawa_Co.pdf

SJI CONTINUES TO SUPPORT COURTS IN U.S. TERRITORIES 

   

In addition to grant funding to the 50 states, SJI has also supported numerous grants to courts located in U.S. 

territories, including Puerto Rico, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and Guam. SJI grants 

are vital to these courts, as they seek to improve their judiciary and provide access to justice with limited 

resources. For example, SJI provided grant funding to Guam for the reorganization of the judiciary following 

enactment of federal legislation recognizing the Guam Supreme Court as the appellate court for Island residents, 

and vesting all administrative authority of the judicial branch in the Chief Justice. (continued on page 3)

Page 2 E-SJI News – Vol. 19, No. 5
Board of Directors

Chairman

Robert A. Miller 

Chief Justice (Ret.) 

Supreme Court of South Dakota 

Pierre, SD 

Vice Chairman

Joseph F. Baca 

Chief Justice (Ret.) 

New Mexico Supreme Court 

Santa Fe, NM 

Secretary

Sandra A. O’Connor 

States Attorney of Baltimore 

County (Ret.) 

Towson, MD 

Executive Committee Member

Keith McNamara, Esq. 

McNamara & McNamara 

Columbus, OH 

Terrence B. Adamson, Esq. 

Executive Vice-President 

The National Geographic Society 

Robert N. Baldwin 

Executive Vice President and 

General Counsel 

National Center for State Courts 

Carlos R. Garza, Esq. 

Administrative Judge (Ret.) 

Round Rock, TX 

Sophia H. Hall 

Administrative Presiding Judge 

Circuit Court of Cook County 

Chicago, IL 

Tommy Jewell 

Presiding Children’s Court Judge 

(Ret.) 

Second Judicial District Court 

Albuquerque, NM 

Arthur A. McGiverin 

Chief Justice (Ret.) 

Supreme Court of Iowa 

Des Moines, IA 

Janice Munsterman 

Executive Director 

Jonathan Mattiello 

Deputy Director 

The State Justice Institute is a 

private, non-profit corporation 

established by Federal law in 1984 

to improve the quality of justice in 

state courts, and foster innovative, 

efficient solutions to common 

issues faced by all courts. SJI is 

governed by a Board of Directors 

appointed by the President and 

confirmed by the Senate. 

A recent SJI grant to Puerto Rico helped establish a judge mentoring program 

for newly appointed judges, and judges who are transferred from other duties. 

This project also helped the Judicial Academy of Puerto Rico to meet its 

mandate of providing professional development and training to the judiciary 

per the Commonwealth’s Judiciary Act of 2003. While support to the U.S. 

territories is a very small component of SJI’s grant programs, SJI will 

continue to fund worthwhile projects that benefit these courts. 

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS 

3⁄4 Next grant and scholarship application deadline: May 1, 2009 (3rd

Quarter, FY 2009). 

3⁄4 The FY 2009 SJI Grant Guideline is available on the SJI website. 

3⁄4 All SJI forms are available on the website under the following tab: 

http://www.sji.gov/forms.php. 

 

 

Page 3 E-SJI News – Vol. 19, No. 5