On August 4, 2006, at the American Bar Association (ABA) Annual Conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, Mari Kay Bickett, Executive Director of the Texas Center for the Judiciary, was presented with the 2006 ABA's Judicial Division Judicial Education Award. The award recognizes the Texas Center for the Judiciary as the leading judicial educator in the country.

“The impressive aspect of this award is that the selection was made by blind vote,” said John D. Ellis, Jr., member of the Board of Directors for the State Bar of Texas and delegate to the American Bar Association (ABA) for the Houston Bar Association. “No one knew which state the applications came from and the Texas Center won by a unanimous vote.”

Over 500 members of the Texas judiciary were in attendance for the state presentation at the Judicial Section Annual Conference, held September 10th thru 13th in Houston. Mari Kay Bickett, Executive Director of the Texas Center for the Judiciary, received the award from Ellis.

“We are honored to receive this recognition from the American Bar Association,” said Bickett. “The Texas Center strives to develop exceptional continuing judicial education opportunities for the Texas judiciary. Our programs allow judges the opportunity to obtain advanced, specialized training in their jurisdictional area so they can excel on the bench and keep with our mission statement — Judicial Excellence Through Education.”

In June, the Texas Center for the Judiciary received a Presidential Citation from President Eduardo Rodriguez, President of the State Bar of Texas, for providing outstanding educational opportunities to the judges of the State. President Rodriguez noted that exceptional recognition was deserved for the Texas Center’s leadership in increasing the specialized competence of Texas judges through establishing standards of certification in the fields of Appellate, Civil, Criminal, Family, Juvenile, and General Jurisdiction through the Texas College for Judicial Studies.

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