Meet Hon. Michael Anthony Town, a judge in the Criminal Division of the Circuit Court in Honolulu, Hawaii.

With Proyecto ACCESO, he is juez miguel antonio pueblo and is an instructor in our Oral Advocacy I workshops. A leader in the problem solving court movement of the United States, Judge Town works with avant garde jurists to develop horizontal systems of justice that prevent delinquency.

Judge Town´s commitment to Latin America goes as far back as his days in Colombia with the United States Peace Corps. Since then, Judge Town received A.B. from Stanford, his Juris Doctor degree from Hastings College of Law and an LL.M. degree from Yale School of Law.

After his days as a public defender, Judge Town was appointed to the bench as a district family court judge in 1979. In 1993, he was appointed to the circuit court and has served as Senior Judge (presiding judge) of the Family Court of the First Circuit, which is a unified family court hearing a wide variety of family and child related cases. In this work, Judge Town continued to work towards more horizontal judicial methods that are restorative in nature.

Judge Town served on the Board of Trustees of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges from 1990 to 1997 and speaks on behalf of the Council on subjects such as the unified family court, the role of the court, domestic violence, alternative dispute resolution, and therapeutic, preventive and restorative justice. He has publishes regularly. In ACCESO´s Oral Advocacy workshops, Judge Town uses his experience from two parts of the judicial system (defense and the Bench) to empower participants.