Wednesday, August 6, 2003
Page 3
Judge Michael Nash Elected to Board of National Juvenile, Family Court Judges Group
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Nash, the presiding judge of the Juvenile Court, has been elected to the Board of Trustees of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.
Nash, a Superior Court judge since 1989, becomes one of 30 members of the organization’s governing board. The group, based in Reno, Nev., was founded in 1937 and describes itself as the nation’s oldest and largest judicial membership organization.
Nash said new board members were chosen at the group’s annual meeting in San Antonio, Tex. last month. The group has between 1,700 and 1,800 members, he said.
The judge said this is his first time serving on the board of what he called “a really good organization” dedicated to improving juvenile and family court justice delivery systems nationwide. Asked whether he sought the position or was drafted to serve, Nash responded, “A little of both.”
Nash will serve a three-year term on the Board of Trustees. He noted that the board typically meets at least twice a year, holding a mid-year winter meeting and then meeting during the group’s annual gathering, which will take place next July in Portland, Ore.
A graduate of UCLA and Loyola University School of Law, Nash was a California deputy attorney general from 1974 to 1985 and one of the prosecutors in the Hillside Strangler trial in 1981-83. He was appointed to the Los Angeles Municipal Court in 1985.
Nash has been a juvenile court judge since 1990 and has served as either Juvenile Court presiding judge or Dependency Court supervising judge since 1995. He is a lead judge for the NCJFCJ’s Child Victims Act Model Courts Initiative, under which the Los Angeles Juvenile Court is one of 25 model courts nationwide implementing strategies to reduce child abuse.
Nash co-chairs the California Judicial Council’s Family Juvenile Law Advisory Committee and was named in June to a three-year term on the Judicial Council by California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald M. George. That term will begin Sept. 14.
NCJFCJ spokesperson Jackie Ruffin said Judge James Ray, administrative judge of the Juvenile Division of the Lucas County Court of Common Pleas in Toledo, Ohio was chosen at the annual meeting to serve as the organization’s president for the coming year.
Copyright 2003, Metropolitan News Company