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Access to Justice
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December 15, 2023
The Biggest Access To Justice Issues Of 2023
High-profile death penalty cases, voting rights, civil forfeiture and fair pay for legal aid workers were among the biggest issues this year impacting the rights of disadvantaged people facing challenges in the American justice system.
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December 14, 2023
4th Circ. Pauses Fight Over SC Non-Atty Legal Advice Law
The Fourth Circuit agreed Wednesday to pause a lawsuit brought by South Carolina's NAACP chapter challenging the legality of a state law that bars non-attorneys from giving legal advice while the merits of the NAACP eviction relief program at issue are under consideration at the state-court level.
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December 14, 2023
Attys, Advocates Urge NY Gov. To Sign Appeals Reform Bill
More than 350 attorneys, advocates and organizations on Thursday urged New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to sign a bill that will expand an appellate court's ability to examine if evidence in criminal cases was uncovered unconstitutionally by law enforcement.
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December 08, 2023
The Purgatory Docket: Mass. Judge Leaves Cases In Limbo
A Massachusetts federal judge has dozens of long-unresolved motions on his docket, highlighting what experts say is a problem that is difficult to solve amid lifetime appointments, no firm deadlines to resolve civil disputes or any form of discipline for judges if cases stall unnecessarily.
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December 01, 2023
How Trauma-Informed Lawyering Can Help Clients Heal
The story of an Olympic gymnast-turned-lawyer illustrates the emotional and psychological challenges that trauma survivors can face, how these challenges can play out in litigation, and how people who have experienced trauma can bounce back.
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December 01, 2023
Gibson Dunn Helps Vindicate LA Reporter After Protest Arrest
Three years after a reporter with the Los Angeles-area National Public Radio affiliate was tackled by sheriff's deputies and arrested while covering a protest, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP has helped secure a $700,000 settlement that the firm is hailing as a win for press freedom.
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December 01, 2023
A Mountain To Climb: The Inaccessibility Of Rural Courts
Unlike the shortage of attorneys available to represent clients in rural areas, experts say there are an adequate number of courthouses to serve people living in remote areas of the country. It's getting to them that's the problem.
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December 01, 2023
Executions Concentrated In 5 States As Fairness Doubts Grow
Only a handful of states executed people in 2023 as more Americans think the death penalty is carried out unfairly than fairly for the first time, according to a year-end report released Friday by the Death Penalty Information Center.
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November 30, 2023
Gap In Access To Legal Assistance Remains Wide, ABA Finds
The United States is home to the largest number of attorneys in the world, and it has by far the highest number of lawyers per capita, yet they are mostly concentrated in a few urban areas, leaving entire swaths of the country as legal deserts, according to a new report by the American Bar Association.
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November 29, 2023
Local Gov't Org Backs Baltimore In Incarceration Pay Fight
An advocacy organization for local governments backed Baltimore County, Maryland, in its effort to convince the Fourth Circuit to uphold a ruling that people who performed work at a county recycling plant while incarcerated were not considered employees under federal law, telling the court that reversal would ultimately harm incarcerated people.
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November 28, 2023
Justices Wary Of Ga. Retrial Law: 'An Acquittal Is An Acquittal'
The U.S. Supreme Court seemed dubious Tuesday that a Georgia law allowing for the re-prosecution of all criminal charges in certain cases with contradictory jury verdicts, including partial acquittals, passes constitutional muster, bombarding the state's solicitor general with questions on how the law fits into the nation's tradition of respecting jury verdicts.
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November 27, 2023
Justices Hear Dueling Rules In ACCA Drug Definition Case
The U.S. Supreme Court pointedly challenged the government Monday on its interpretation of a law that sets up a 15-year mandatory minimum sentence for people convicted of repeated serious drug offenses who are later caught with firearms.
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November 27, 2023
Top State Judges To Tackle Public Interest 'Lawyer Deserts'
A new committee composed of state Supreme Court chief justices and others will examine why fewer attorneys are going into public interest law, as well as the state of legal education and bar admissions processes more generally, according to an announcement Monday.
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November 21, 2023
Baltimore County Tells 4th Circ. Inmates Aren't Employees
Inmates who performed work at a recycling plant in a county jail are not considered employees for the purposes of federal law because their work was rehabilitative in nature, Baltimore County told the Fourth Circuit, asking the court to keep its district court win.
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November 20, 2023
Plaintiffs Want NYC Jails Handed Over To Federal Receiver
Plaintiffs in a decadelong class action challenging brutality by staff at New York City jails have asked a federal judge to appoint a federal receiver to take the helm of the troubled city jail system following record violence at its facilities, attorneys confirmed on Monday.
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November 20, 2023
Justices To Decide Jury's Role In Career Criminal Sentences
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to weigh in on whether a judge or jury should determine if a criminal defendant's prior convictions qualify them for enhanced sentencing under the Armed Career Criminal Act, a ruling an Indiana defendant and the U.S. Department of Justice agree belongs in the hands of jurors.
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November 17, 2023
They Are Mentally Ill; Some States Want Them Off Death Row
Death rows across the country are filled with people suffering from severe forms of mental illness. Taking action in an area where the U.S. Supreme Court has not ventured, some states are now enacting or considering laws that would exclude those prisoners from capital punishment.
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November 17, 2023
Growing Movement Teaches Cops To Confront Misconduct
After a string of high-profile incidents including the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, a growing number of law enforcement agencies are participating in a peer intervention program designed to empower police officers to step in when they see something that isn’t right, and to teach about the psychology of why people don’t always intervene.
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November 17, 2023
New Texas A2J Leader On Plans To Narrow The Justice Gap
The new executive director of the Texas Access to Justice Commission says she's "hit the ground running" as the commission tackles big issues like limited-scope representation and the use of paraprofessionals to provide legal assistance to those unable to afford an attorney.
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November 16, 2023
NY Gov. Signs Bill To Seal Certain Criminal Records
New Yorkers convicted of certain crimes will have their conviction records automatically sealed after a set number of years, with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday signing a bill aimed at curbing discrimination against formerly incarcerated people and boosting employment.
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November 16, 2023
Scholars Back NAACP In Fight Over SC Legal Advice Law
A group of legal scholars has urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to prevent a South Carolina law, which bars nonlawyers from giving legal advice, from applying to a new eviction-help program by the NAACP, saying the program is necessary to confront the state's dire access to justice crisis, court documents show.
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November 13, 2023
Justices Split In Denial Of Solitary Confinement Challenge
The U.S. Supreme Court split along ideological lines Monday when it declined to review a Seventh Circuit ruling that an Illinois prison's decision to deprive an inmate in solitary confinement of exercise for three years did not violate his constitutional rights — a ruling the court's liberal wing said was an "indisputable" error.
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November 08, 2023
Activists Optimistic Justices Will Uphold Abuser Gun Ban
Gun and domestic violence advocates are optimistic the U.S. Supreme Court will uphold a federal statute prohibiting people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms, saying the justices during oral argument seemed to have a consensus about the regulation's importance and that the Fifth Circuit erred in striking it down.
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November 07, 2023
Justices Skeptical Of Keeping Domestic Abusers Armed
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared skeptical of a lower-court decision that a federal law prohibiting people who are subject to domestic violence restraining orders from owning firearms violates the Second Amendment.
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November 06, 2023
NAACP Program Asks 4th Circ. To Block SC Legal Advice Law
The NAACP pressed its case in the Fourth Circuit for an injunction to prevent a South Carolina law barring nonlawyers from giving legal advice from applying to a new eviction-help program, arguing Monday the statute is trampling on the tenant advocates' free speech rights.
Expert Analysis
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Lack Of Access To Remote Court Proceedings Is Inexcusable
Blanket rules that bar recording or dissemination of remote public court proceedings impede presumptive common law and First Amendment right of access, greatly expand courts' powers over nonparties, and likely run afoul of U.S. Supreme Court precedent, says Matthew Schafer at ViacomCBS.
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Countering Racial Bias In Courts Requires Bold Change
A recent review of the New York state court system recommends addressing pervasive racism through anti-bias trainings and better discrimination complaint protocols, but such efforts only scratch the surface of systemic racism in the law, says Jason Wu at the Legal Aid Society.
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In Defense Of Data-Based Pretrial Risk Assessment
Equitable, research-based pretrial prison release decisions are not lucrative for the bail bond industry, which has led to misleading attacks against data-driven assessment tools, say Madeline Carter and Alison Shames at the Center for Effective Public Policy.
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Change The Bankruptcy System To Help End Cycle Of Poverty
Courts must simplify their procedures to make bankruptcy more accessible to those who can't afford lawyers, especially as the pandemic drives bankruptcies to unprecedented levels, says Robert Gordon, a principal at Lerch Early and a former bankruptcy judge.
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Book Review: Did The High Court Cause Mass Incarceration?
William Pizzi's argument in "The Supreme Court's Role in Mass Incarceration" that the U.S. Supreme Court is responsible for the high rate of incarceration is compelling, but his criticism overlooks the positive dimensions of the criminal procedure decisions under Chief Justice Earl Warren, says U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman of the Eastern District of Wisconsin.
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Pandemic Should Propel New Prison Reforms
Prison releases resulting from coronavirus and earlier legislation proved that not all nonviolent offenders need to be jailed; this should spur penal system reform that includes expanded probationary alternatives, tax incentives for companies that employ ex-offenders and government transparency to ensure unbiased sentencing, says Abbe Lowell at Winston & Strawn.
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Finding A Path Forward To Regulate The Legal Industry
Gerald Knapton at Ropers Majeski analyzes U.S. and U.K. experiments to explore alternative business structures and independent oversight for law firms, which could lead to innovative approaches to increasing access to legal services.
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Remote Court Procedures Can Help Domestic Abuse Victims
Courts have recently adopted remote procedures to make domestic violence victims feel safer during the COVID-19 crisis, but they should consider preserving these trauma-sensitive adaptations post-pandemic as well, say Ashley Carter and Richard Kelley at the DC Volunteer Lawyers Project.
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Law Commission's New Idea For Confiscation Orders Is Unfair
The recent proposal by the Law Commission of England and Wales to recall prisoners who fail to settle their confiscation orders when they have already served a sentence for nonpayment would, in effect, punish them twice for the same act, says Brian Swan at Stokoe Partnership.
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Barrett Should Be Questioned On Children's Access To Courts
At a time when children's lives are so threatened by avoidable climate change chaos, understanding U.S. Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett's views on what standing future generations have to seek declaratory relief in Article III courts should be an essential part of her confirmation hearings, says Julia Olson at Our Children's Trust.
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A Smarter Approach To Measuring Prosecutorial Success
To improve their ability to dispense justice, prosecutors should measure the efficacy of their work based on metrics such as caseload distribution, timely case handling and racial disparity trends — instead of the traditionally used conviction rates and number of trials, say Anthony Thompson at the New York University School of Law and Miriam Krinsky at Fair and Just Prosecution.
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States Shouldn't Hinder Local Gov'ts In COVID-19 Tenant Aid
In the face of increasing state preemption and absent other government intervention, states should explicitly allow city and county policymakers to help renters in order to avoid a pandemic-prompted eviction crisis, say Emily Benfer at Wake Forest University School of Law and Nestor Davidson at Fordham University School of Law.
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An Abuse Of Prosecutorial Discretion In Breonna Taylor Case
The prosecution's decision in the Breonna Taylor grand jury proceedings to present a crucial, disputed fact — whether the officers knocked and announced themselves when they arrived at Taylor's apartment — as a settled question represents the partiality police officers often enjoy from prosecutors, says attorney Geoffrey D. Kearney.
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Immigration Appeals Proposal Would Erode Due Process
A recent Trump administration proposal to limit appellate review of immigration cases would eviscerate the few existing legal protections for immigrants and asylum seekers at a time when they are already routinely denied due process in court, says Lynn Pearson at the Tahirih Justice Center.
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11th Circ. Ruling Doesn't Lower Qualified Immunity Bar
While a video recording in Cantu v. City of Dothan — a recent Eleventh Circuit case involving a fatal shooting by a police officer — allowed the plaintiffs to clear the difficult qualified immunity hurdle, the court's ruling does not make it easier for most victims to surmount the defense, says Adriana Collado-Hudak at Greenspoon Marder.