WV judges hold court at Concord University

Sep. 22—ATHENS — University students thinking about becoming attorneys saw a higher court system in action Thursday when the West Virginia Intermediate Court of Appeals heard actual cases on campus.

The hearings, part of Concord University's Constitution Day Celebration, were convened in the campus's Anderson Theater. Chief Justice Dan Greear of the West Virginia Intermediate Court of Appeals that Thursday's hearing were the first the justices had conducted outside their courtroom in Charleston.

"We're on the campus of Concord University to hold oral arguments," Greear said before court was in session. "It's a program patterned after what the Supreme Court does at the WVU College of Law and also at Marshall University. They also go to high schools around the state and hold oral arguments occasionally."

The state Intermediate Court of Appeals was signed into law in 2021 and started hearing cases on July 1, 2022. Judges serving on the new court soon realized they could aid the education of future attorneys and other legal professionals.

Greear said they noticed that none of the courts were going to the state's other four-year colleges and universities, and decided that was a niche the new court could fill. By conducting hearings on campuses, the court could show students what it is like to practice law, learn about the judicial system and possibly inspire them to look at a career in law.

What the students saw Thursday were not reenactments. They were in court and listening to actual court cases.

"These are real live. We'll have two actual cases. This isn't a mock session or anything," Greear stated. "This is an actual dispute between litigants in real states. We'll be hearing oral arguments today and we'll be rendering opinions and writing opinions on both of these two cases, just like every argument we hear in Charleston. The only difference is the location, but everything else is exactly the same."

The state Intermediate Court of Appeals has a limited jurisdiction.

"We're an appellate court so everything comes to us on appeal," Greear said. "Our four major areas of jurisdiction are all civil appeals and civil cases, family law cases, Workers Comp appeals and administrative law appeals. There's other little minor things, but that's about 98 percent of our jurisdiction and those four categories. We do not handle criminal, abuse and neglect, juvenile, things like that."

Before the new court was created, cases involving issues such as family law cases and Workers Comp were heard in the county circuit courts. Having to deal with all these cases added a lot to their workload, Greear stated.

"One of the significant things our court has been able to accomplish is to take some of that caseload off of the circuit courts so they can focus on criminals and abuse and neglect. and the drug epidemic and those types of problems," he said.

Greear hoped the students would get a better idea how the judicial process works by seeing it in action.

"I hope they get to have a little taste of what it's like to be an attorney, what it's like to actually make an oral argument, see our judicial system work," he stated. "You might hear about it on TV shows, but that's probably not a realistic view of what happens in a courtroom. I think it will be most of these students' first exposure to an appellate court in particular. We hope it's eye opening and they see a branch of their government at work. Some of them have been to the Legislature as pages, but a lot of them have not been in a courtroom to see an actual proceeding, so we think it's very important."

Judge Thomas Scarr said he came to Concord University last week and taught an American government class. He hoped some of the students would come away interested enough to pursue a career in law.

"Well, as a lawyer, prior to being a lawyer I don't think I was ever in a courtroom and I didn't have a family member who was. I was not interested in history or government, but after years of practice in law, I'm fascinated by it," he said. "I see it being part of every part of our lives. I'm hoping they get an appreciation not only of the judicial system, but how it operates. As imperfect as it is, it's still amazing. The whole idea of how our government works, separation of powers, checks and balances and so on."

Justice Charlie Lorensen said the program's goal is to expose college students to an appellate procedure in a live format.

"Hopefully, it gives them an interest in how disputes are resolved and how disputes are reviewed in a judicial system as a matter of civics just to understand how the appellate court works," he said. "A lot of people are familiar with TV shows that go into courtroom dramatics and those are generally trial courts that hear evidence and cross-examinations. This is more scholarly legal arguments talking about what happened below because our system has a system of checks and balances, and we're part of that. And we love to let the students have an opportunity to experience it."

Concord freshmen Colby Bailey and Taylor Meade were among the students waiting for the hearings to begin.

"I'm hoping to learn how it actually works in the Supreme Court in the Intermediate Court of Appeals," Bailey said. "I want to be a lawyer, so I'm really focused on how they do it and how it works, how they resolve the cases. I want to be a divorce lawyer."

"Kind of the same thing," Meade added about her goals. "I want to see how the court works and how the attorneys do. I want to be a prosecuting attorney. I want to learn more about how it works. I did an internship through the courthouse. I sat through court hearings in the (Mercer County) magistrate courts."

— Contact Greg Jordan at gjordan@bdtonline.com