A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF JUSTICE OF PEACE IN SPAIN

I. Location of the paper in the context of Conference:

The author presents this paper to the International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation (ICERI 2010) that will be held in Madrid on the 15th-17th of November 2010. Within its main goal -the promotion of international collaboration in Education and Research in all educational fields and disciplines- the author wants to study the following two matters:

->Education: New trends and experiences: Education practice trends and issues: The author is teacher of Jurisdictional Law, the branch of Law that explains and regulates how to resolve disputes of citizens in the courts. Jurisdictional Law focuses on the ordinary justice, devoting little time and attention to justice of peace, that served by judges of peace in municipal courts. However, the last is being criticized and considered a very important element in order to modernize justice in Spain. That is why the author of this paper has designed a pedagogical project to study and analyze justice of peace in our legal order with Law students.

->Technology in Teaching and Learning: Learning and Teaching Innovations: the author will explain how he have designed and implemented during first semester of 2009-2010 school year a pedagogical intervention project to study and analyse justice of peace with Law students. Ordinary master classes have been changed by a researching group work and a visit to a municipal justice of peace court.

II. Justice of peace: something necessary but in need of reform.

All Spanish cities where there is not a Court of First Instance and Instruction have a municipal justice of peace court, with civil (registration by proxy and conflicts up to 90 Euros) and criminal jurisdiction (misdemeanours punished with fines) We are, therefore, in front of the closest court to the citizen, where they usually go in compliance with the duties of civil registration (births, marriages, certificates…).

The main peculiarity of justice of peace is the figure of the judge who serves in it: judge of peace. Heir or successor of the old “good man”, peace judge does not know law but has a deep knowledge of the locality in with he serves and of its people, which facilitates his conciliatory functions and composition of small civil and criminal disputes.

However, lately has been much talk about the rationale and effectiveness of municipal justice. Many people and politicians think that we are in front of a key to modernizing the administration of justice.

III. A new methodology of teaching and learning. The experience of the 2009-2010 school year at the University of the Basque Country.

The first semester of 2009-2010 school-year, the one who writes these lines has worked on justice of peace with the students of the Faculty of Law. In order to develop this aim, have been followed a methodology based on three pillars: (1) cooperative learning, (2) problem-based learning, and (3) case method.

8 hours have been dedicated to make a researching group work, to visit a municipal court and to make a role-playing.