Media Advocacy
The Center for Judicial Excellence (CJE) was born in a San Rafael living room and was essentially incubated in a local PR firm. This short-term 2006 public relations project quickly grew into a stand-alone 501(c)3 organization that continues to develop and disseminate powerful content about the family court crisis and related problems stemming from a complete lack of effective oversight of the judicial branch.
CJE has worked with journalists on hundreds of television, radio, print, and online news stories since our inception to expose the crisis in the family court system, and we believe that the media tipping point is near, when the family court crisis will finally break into the mainstream consciousness and national dialogue. We know how exceedingly difficult it is – each and every day – for the millions of parents and children who are mired in a corrupt, dysfunctional system that is destroying their lives. Just like USA Gymnastics, the Catholic Church pedophile scandal, Penn State football, or the Boy Scouts of America, we know that this crisis won’t be exposed overnight. Yet we work tirelessly to ensure that someday soon, this harmful epidemic will be exposed to the significant public health crisis that it is.
Legislative Advocacy
CJE has worked tirelessly to educate lawmakers at the local, state, and national levels about the impacts of the family court crisis on their constituents.
While we recognize the importance of pushing for and winning key legislative reforms that will better protect children and their families, we also recognize that the family courts routinely ignore state law, and judges often do whatever they want in their courtrooms. Appellate courts rarely take up family law appeals, instead giving broad discretion to family court judges. We continue to believe that the lack of accountability in family courts, and to some extent in the judicial branch as a whole, is the single biggest problem facing litigants who find themselves stuck in a never-ending series of court hearings that drag on for years and deplete their life savings.
CJE will continue to fight for judicial accountability, first and foremost, and we will gladly sign onto bills that aim to provide much-needed oversight of the judicial branch.
The Center for Judicial Excellence has made its mark in the federal and state legislative arenas, pushing for judicial accountability and family court reform in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. From leading the successful statewide lobbying effort to pass the historic 2016 JLAC audit of California’s only judicial oversight agency, the Commission on Judicial Performance to our leadership role in the national effort to pass House Concurrent Resolution 72 by unanimous consent in the U.S. House of Representatives, CJE works tirelessly to demand accountability and child safety in our nation’s family courts.