Conference speakers included judges, a legal specialist, and a journalist. Papers are devoted to the organization, program, and curriculum for judge trainees in the Netherlands; formal and informal criteria for selecting judges in the Netherlands; and arguments for including judicial trainees in the design of training courses for the judiciary. Further subjects are an assessment of judges' conservatism and methods of making the judiciary more representative of society at large, and possible alternatives to the existing process of selecting judge trainees. Also discussed are the relationship of lawyers and judges within the Dutch criminal justice system; desirable improvements within the judiciary and means of reducing the passivity of judges; and the function of judges within Western European democracies. Further papers cover recent criticism of Dutch judges in the press from a journalist's point of view; the role, selection, and training of public service judges; characteristics desirable in judges; training required to avoid problems common among judges (e.g., communication difficulties); and means of improving judges' communications skills. Notes are provided for the separate articles. For individual papers, see NCJ 88330-88334.