Judge Barth Attends 51st Annual Courts Conference

Judge Robert A. Barth recently attended the 2016 Annual Courts Conference of the Missouri Municipal and Associate Circuit Judges Association at Lake of the Ozarks. Judge Barth is the municipal judge for the city of Noel.

Municipal judges are judges of the circuit courts and are subject to requirements for continuing legal education in order to receive annual updates on new laws passed by the legislature, important decisions of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals as well as developments in the judicial branch of government. Attendance at the three-day Annual Courts Conference of the MMACJA fulfills a significant part of that requirement.

The Missouri Municipal and Associate Circuit Judges Association is composed of municipal judges, both lawyer and non-lawyer, and associate circuit judges. These judges preside over municipal and associate circuit courts in the state of Missouri. The municipal and associate circuit divisions hear the greatest majority of the cases heard by the Missouri judiciary.

The purpose of the association is to assist and train its members to better perform their duties as judges. Since its founding, the association has grown from a small group of 12 to over 350 members.

Among the topics included in the 2016 Annual Courts Conference were complying with Senate Bill 5, bail bonds in a post Fergus era, the technology and use of virtual courts, implicit bias, judicial professionalism, new ideas and strategies for enforcing monetary judgments and a case law update. The conference also included a joint session with the Missouri Association of Court Administrators.