Allentown, PA (January 6, 2010) – Judge Thomas Wallitsch (ret.), Member of Tallman Hudders & Sorrentino, the Pennsylvania office of Norris McLaughlin & Marcus, P.A., spoke to over one hundred members of the Foreign Policy Association of Harrisburg on the subject of “Building Judicial Systems in New Democracies” on Thursday, December 17, 2009. Judge Wallitsch spoke about the challenges of building the legal systems in developing countries. He has worked for various organizations, including the United Nations Development Programme as a senior judicial advisor in Morocco, Algeria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and most recently in the Maldives.
The Foreign Policy Association of Harrisburg, founded in 1949, offers information about international issues and policies to help citizens make well-informed judgments about their relations with foreign nations. The local Association is a non-profit and non-partisan organization that, while aligned with the National Foreign Policy Association, is independently governed by a local board of directors. The Association sponsors monthly dinner meetings which feature a wide variety of speakers who present their experiences or expertise on topics of interest.
“I enjoy sharing my experiences with others. My involvement with international governments has been rewarding work. The most fulfilling part of my role with international government relations has been observing citizens of the countries benefit from the development of and improvements to their judicial systems,” says Wallitsch.
Judge Wallitsch, a Member of the firm, heads the Litigation Group at the Pennsylvania office. He maintains an active practice in the areas of alternative dispute resolution (mediation and arbitration) and appellate practice.
In 1991, he was appointed and then elected to the Lehigh County Court of Common Please bench where he served until 2006. During those fifteen years, Judge Wallitsch was the administrative judge of the civil division of the Court and was active in judicial matters throughout the state. He served as Chairman of the Education Committee of the Pennsylvania Conference of Trial Judges for nine years, was a member, vice-chair and chair of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania’s Appellate Court Procedural Rules Committee, and served as a member of the Judicial Conduct Board of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Judge Wallitsch has also served the international judicial community in a number of ways. In 2005, he was the first resident liaison of the American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative in Morocco. In 2006 he was named as Senior Judicial Advisor to USAID’S Afghanistan Rule of Law Project and was stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan for seven months in charge of the court administration and judicial training components of this project. Thereafter he has served as a consultant to USAID’s Rule of Law Projects in Algeria and the Ukraine.