The Illinois Supreme Court announced today an expansion of its judge mentoring program designed to aid judges in the performance of their judicial duties. The new Peer Judge Mentor Program is the continuation of an initiative announced 13 months ago by Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas R. Fitzgerald and the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts under Director Cynthia Y. Cobbs to improve public confidence in the courts and ensure judicial independence by improving the skills and performance of the Illinois judiciary. "Judicial independence is necessarily dependent upon public confidence in the operation of our courts," said Chief Justice Fitzgerald. "The Peer Mentoring Program, along with prior judicial performance initiatives announced by the Court, are prompted by a desire to produce the highest quality judiciary for the citizens of this state. They are designed to make a very good judiciary even better." The new initiative will train and assign judicial mentors to Illinois judges who seek to enhance their skills or performance. A judge's self-referral might be prompted by participation in the Court's Judicial Performance Evaluation Program, which was made mandatory for Illinois judges in the Supreme Court's 2008 initiatives. In addition to providing for self-referral, the new initiative also vests in a chief circuit court judge discretion to assign a mentor to a judge who could benefit from a confidential one-on-one relationship. Training of a corps of judicial mentors and administration of the mentoring program will be modeled after the successes of the New Judge Mentoring Program which the Court and the Administrative Office have conducted since 1998. That program was first initiated by then Chief Justice Charles E. Freeman and is considered a crucial tool in the training and development of new judges.

Cynthia Cobbs, Director of the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts, has announced that the Third Judicial Circuit Judges voted to select Dean E. Sweet as an associate judge of the Third Judicial Circuit. Mr. Sweet received his undergraduate degree in 1973 from Eastern Illinois University and his Juris Doctor in 1976 from St. Louis University. Mr. Sweet is currently engaged in solo practice in Wood River.

[caption id="attachment_5931" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Justice Thomas Kilbride"][/caption] Illinois Supreme Court Justice Thomas L. Kilbride will be honored and will receive an Honorary Doctorate Degree from Lewis University during the 2009 Winter Commencement ceremony to be held on Saturday, December 19 at 4 p.m. Justice Kilbride will be the recipient of the Doctorate of Humanities during Saturday's Graduate Ceremony that will be held in the University's Student Recreation and Fitness Center at its main campus in Romeoville. "The University is honored to recognize Justice Kilbride for his 10 years of distinguished service as a highly-respected member of the Supreme Court of Illinois and as an accomplished attorney and advocate for the poor," said Lewis University President Brother James Gaffney, FSC. Justice Kilbride, who grew up in Kankakee, received his B.A. degree magna cum laude from Saint Mary's in 1978; and his law degree from Antioch School of Law in Washington D.C. in 1981. While in law school, Justice Kilbride completed judicial internships for the administrative assistant to the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court and for U.S. District Court Judge Joyce Hens Green.

Cynthia Y. Cobbs, Director of the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts, has announced that Mark S. Goodwin received a majority of the votes cast by the circuit judges in the Fifth Judicial Circuit and is declared appointed to the office of associate judge. Mr. Goodwin received his undergraduate degree in 1984 from Illinois State University and his Juris Doctor in 1987 from John Marshall Law School. Mr. Goodwin is currently affiliated with Dukes, Ryan, Meyer, Freed, Goodwin, et al., in Danville.