Judge Elyze M. Iriarte

 

Judge Elyze M. Iriarte currently presides over General Jurisdiction cases and is additionally assigned the Adult Guardianship, Juvenile Delinquency, Child Custody, and Family dockets. She spearheads the Judiciary’s Civil Justice Reform Pilot Program, which seeks to improve access, ensure procedural fairness, and reduce cost and delay in civil cases. As part of that initiative, she created the Judiciary’s Settlement Conference Program which generates civil case settlement opportunities. Also, since assuming the guardianship docket, Judge Iriarte has instituted educational prerequisites for new guardians and developed standardized forms for mandatory guardianship plans and more detailed, regular reporting. She also developed the Court Visitor program, which utilizes interns from the University of Guam’s Division of Social Work to assist the Court in evaluating the conditions of persons under guardianships. Within the juvenile delinquency docket, she has furthered the Judiciary’s ongoing juvenile justice reform efforts by forming and chairing the Juvenile Justice Judges’ Executive Committee. This Committee improves the education of practitioners on evidence-based practices, evaluates the Judiciary’s handling of juvenile delinquency petitions and probation methods, examines detention policies, and encourages collaboration with stakeholders.

Moreover, she co-chairs the Judiciary’s Rules of Civil Procedure Committee and the 2020-2023 Strategic Plan Focus Area on Technology. Most recently, the Judiciary tasked her to preside over cases relevant to persons quarantined due to COVID-19.

Judge Iriarte was appointed to the Superior Court of Guam in 2016 after 15 years of practice in the private sector. She earned her B.A. in Law Letters & Society from the University of Chicago in 1998. She obtained her J.D. in 2001 from the University of Southern California School of Law, where she was the articles editor for the Southern California Review of Law & Women’s Studies. She is admitted to practice law in Guam, California, Hawaii, Republic of Palau, and the Northern Mariana Islands.