Access to Justice

  • June 25, 2024

    Immigration Org.'s Attys Can Be In Union, NLRB Official Says

    Attorneys at a nonprofit providing immigration legal services may remain in a voluntarily recognized union bargaining unit, a National Labor Relations Board regional director concluded, saying the attorneys are not supervisors who are excluded from unionizing under federal labor law.

  • June 24, 2024

    Mich. Justices Take Up Young Adults' Life Sentence Challenge

    Michigan's top court will weigh whether the state's mandatory life sentence for murder is unconstitutional when applied to young adults, after 19- and 20-year-olds argued that a 2022 precedent banning the punishment for 18-year-olds should extend to them.

  • June 21, 2024

    Justices Keep Domestic Abusers Disarmed, Clarify Bruen

    The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a Texas man's constitutional challenge to a federal law prohibiting people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms Friday, providing limited guidance to lower courts on how to apply the high court's Second Amendment historical analogue test.

  • June 11, 2024

    DC Firms Honored For Local Legal Services Donations

    The D.C. Access to Justice Commission is recognizing 39 law firms for their financial contributions to legal aid providers in Washington, saying the private bar's support is crucial to meeting the community's needs.

  • June 10, 2024

    New 'Access DOJ' Aims To Nix Barriers, Boost Accessibility

    The U.S. Department of Justice has announced the launch of an initiative to improve access to its programs and services, including an upcoming project to make it easier to report tips about crime or other violations of law.

  • June 07, 2024

    Judge Doubts Ethnicity Questions Deserve Jury Bias Probe

    A Washington appellate judge pushed back Friday against a Filipino family who claimed a hospital's questions about their ethnicity at trial required a bias inquiry, noting race is "something that can't be ignored" in any courtroom filled with people who look different from one another.

  • June 06, 2024

    Judge Seems Likely To Make Denver Face 2020 Protest Claims

    A Colorado federal judge on Thursday appeared inclined to reject Denver's bid to end claims that it encouraged police to use excessive force against social justice advocates in 2020, pressing the city to explain how its law enforcement policies didn't amount to indifference to violating protesters' rights.

  • June 06, 2024

    Some Colo. Justices Call For Nixing Peremptory Strikes

    Three Colorado Supreme Court justices said this week that eliminating peremptory challenges would help remove "the taint of impermissible discrimination" from the jury selection process, writing in two cases involving the dismissal of Black jurors that the strikes often facilitate racism that can be near impossible for a court to address.

  • June 04, 2024

    SDNY Taps Nonprofit To Run Clinic For Pro Se Litigants

    The City Bar Justice Center announced Tuesday that it has been enlisted to take over the Southern District of New York's 8-year-old legal assistance clinic's services for self-represented litigants, as many low-income Americans face the civil legal system alone.

  • June 03, 2024

    Ga. Sheriff Wants Bookstore Suit Over Jail Book Policy Tossed

    A Georgia sheriff and jail commander asked a Georgia federal judge to toss a lawsuit brought against them by a bookstore that alleges the jail instituted an unconstitutional and arbitrary policy of only allowing books into the county jail from "authorized retailers."

  • May 31, 2024

    DOJ Looks To End A Legacy Of Bias In Sex Assault Cases

    The U.S. Department of Justice says that legal fallacies and misogynistic stereotypes often lead prosecutors to decline to charge alleged perpetrators of sexual violence, but new guidance from the department is pushing prosecutors to give more credence to victims and see that their claims are more thoroughly investigated.

  • May 31, 2024

    Do Jails' 'Approved Vendor' Rules Keep Out Drugs, Or Books?

    Jailhouses and other correctional facilities are increasingly banning books not because of what they say, but because of who sent them, a practice that officials say is designed to keep drugs out of facilities, but which advocates for incarcerated people say only keeps out books.

  • May 31, 2024

    Small Town Va. Firm Wins Big Pro Bono Recognition

    Decades ago, the leaders of a small law firm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley decided to focus on the pro bono legal needs of their community. Its work, including at least one case the firm won before the state Supreme Court, recently earned the firm a national award from the American Bar Association.

  • May 31, 2024

    Migrant Influx Fuels Push For Right To Immigration Counsel

    Amid a soaring backlog of asylum cases in the United States, pro-immigrant advocates have intensified their push for legislation that would give noncitizens the right to legal representation in deportation proceedings.

  • May 30, 2024

    Insurance Atty Fights For Lone Woman On Death Row In Miss.

    Attorney A. Kate Margolis lives a double life: one, in which she fights on behalf of insurance policyholders as counsel at Bradley, and another, spent trying to save convicted murderer Lisa Jo Chamberlin, the only woman on Mississippi's death row.

  • May 29, 2024

    2nd Circ. Unsure If Error Kept Murder Exonerees' Case Alive

    A Second Circuit judge expressed doubt Wednesday that a lower court erred in declining to grant qualified immunity to two Connecticut police officers whose actions allegedly contributed to the wrongful convictions of two men for a 1985 murder, noting that a key piece of evidence challenging prosecutors' theory remains shrouded in mystery.

  • May 29, 2024

    Non-Atty Advice To Debtors Is Unprotected, 2nd Circ. Told

    New York urged the Second Circuit on Wednesday to find that stopping a nonprofit focused on bankruptcy education and the South Bronx pastor it's working with from advising low-income debtors represents a content-neutral regulation on who can practice law that does not violate the First Amendment.

  • May 28, 2024

    Gorsuch Unhappy Court Won't Rethink Jury Size Precedent

    In a strongly worded dissent Tuesday, Justice Neil Gorsuch said the U.S. Supreme Court needs to rethink precedent that "made the unthinkable a reality" by permitting juries of fewer than 12 people to decide cases involving serious criminal offenses.

  • May 23, 2024

    High Court Sides With Gov't Over Repeat Offender Sentencing

    A state drug conviction can trigger a mandatory 15-year sentence under the Armed Career Criminal Act if it involved a drug on the federal schedules at the time of that conviction, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

  • May 20, 2024

    Lethal Injection 'Not Rocket Science,' Ga. Says As Trial Begins

    As Georgia began a bench trial Monday against a death row inmate who is suing to be executed by firing squad, counsel for the state told a federal judge that she expected the inmate to have "a hard road to hoe" in disproving that the state's use of lethal injection is safe, effective and can be carried out with relative ease.

  • May 17, 2024

    NY Discovery Reform Feud Simmers Between DAs, Defenders

    Four years after New York imposed new requirements on prosecutors to more promptly hand over evidence to defendants in criminal cases, data suggests that district attorneys’ offices are still struggling to comply. In the meantime, experts and advocates say many are quietly working to tweak the reforms or potentially scale them back.

  • May 17, 2024

    Reid Collins Helps Score Verdict For Teen In La. Policing Case

    Nearly four years to the day when Louisiana teenager De’Shaun Johnson recorded his mother’s arrest in their Slidell driveway, attorneys with Reid Collins & Tsai LLP and the ACLU help convince a federal jury that a local sheriff’s deputy who threatened to Tase him had intentionally inflicted emotional distress.

  • May 17, 2024

    Inside The New Legal Push To End Calif.'s Death Penalty

    In a first-of-its-kind case in the Golden State, the California Supreme Court is being asked to permanently dismantle the nation’s most populous death row on grounds that capital punishment has been administered in a racially discriminatory manner that disproportionately harms people of color.

  • May 16, 2024

    Lowenstein Sandler Pro Bono Head Leaves Legacy Of Service

    As she winds down her tenure leading Lowenstein Sandler LLP's Center for Public Interest this month, Catherine Weiss is leaving behind a legacy as a fierce public advocate for immigrants and reproductive rights at a time when public interest law as a whole faces new challenges.

  • May 13, 2024

    Jackson, Sotomayor Would Have Taken Up Jury Pool Dispute

    U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor dissented Monday from the other justices' refusal to review a case in which a defendant and his counsel were excluded from attending initial juror qualification in his capital murder case, calling the circumstances "significant and certworthy."

Expert Analysis

  • How Prosecutors Can End Cycle Of Intimate Partner Violence

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    With 10 million people in the U.S. reporting that they experience intimate partner violence each year, it’s clear that traditional forms of prosecution are falling short, especially in small and rural communities, but prosecutors can explore new ways to support survivors and prevent violence, say Alissa Marque Heydari at John Jay College and David Sullivan, a district attorney.

  • DOJ's Boeing Immunity Deal Violated Crime Victims' Rights

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    The Northern District of Texas should support the arguments of 737 Max plane crash victims’ families, and hold that the U.S. Department of Justice violated the families' ability to provide input under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act when it secretly entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with Boeing, says Meg Garvin at the National Crime Victims Law Institute.

  • Jackson Confirmation Hearings Should Examine Due Process

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    In the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings, senators should assess Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s approach to holding government actors accountable in the areas of qualified immunity and forfeiture, as revisiting shaky precedents on these topics could help guarantee due process for all, says Marc Levin at the Council on Criminal Justice.

  • ABA's New Anti-Bias Curriculum Rule Is Insufficient

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    The American Bar Association's recently approved requirement that law schools educate students on bias, cross-cultural competency and racism, while a step in the right direction, fails to publicly acknowledge and commit to eradicating the systemic racial inequality in our legal system, says criminal defense attorney Donna Mulvihill Fehrmann.

  • Justice Reforms Call For Quick Action To Fill US Atty Spots

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    U.S. attorneys play an important role in transforming the criminal legal system for several reasons, and they can restore integrity and independence to the U.S. Department of Justice, so President Joe Biden and Congress must move quickly to fill the remaining two-thirds of the top prosecutor seats, says Derick Dailey at Davis + Gilbert.

  • Judge's Veto Of Arbery Hate Crime Plea Deal Is Not Unusual

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    Contrary to media commentary, a Georgia federal judge’s rejection of the plea agreement between prosecutors and a defendant charged with hate crimes in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery is not actually surprising — it simply indicates the judge’s desire to retain discretion and allow all parties to be heard before making a just sentencing decision, says Dominick Gerace at Taft Stettinius.

  • Indefinite Migrant Detention Without Review Is Kafkaesque

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    In two recently argued U.S. Supreme Court cases, the government's position that detained migrants can't demand an immigration judge review their confinement, but can instead file a habeas petition in federal court, reads like a work of Kafka, offering only the illusion of access to a hearing before a neutral fact-finder, says César García Hernández at Ohio State University.

  • 2 Worthy Goals For The DOJ's New Domestic Terrorism Unit

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    The U.S. Department of Justice’s newly announced Domestic Terrorism Unit should include both counterterrorism and civil rights prosecutors, and would benefit from a criminal statute that is modeled after international terrorism laws and that strikes a balance between protecting the public and constitutional rights, say Emil Bove and Brittany Manna at Chiesa Shahinian.

  • Justice Reforms Are Not To Blame For Waukesha Tragedy

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    Last month's parade attack in Wisconsin has brought into focus the fact that the accused was out of jail on a low bond — but this tragedy must not be exploited to reverse years of long-overdue criminal justice reform, when emerging data shows that new prosecutorial models are associated with better outcomes than an overly punitive approach, says Alissa Marque Heydari at John Jay College.

  • Addressing Prison Risk After CARES Act Home Confinement

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    Home confinement eligibility, which was expanded last year due to high rates of COVID-19 in penal institutions, may soon be tightened, so house-detained individuals at risk of returning to prison should understand their various avenues for relief, as well as the procedural obstacles they may face in mounting legal challenges, say Charles Burnham and Jonathan Knowles at Burnham & Gorokhov.

  • We Must Help Fix Justice Gap In Georgia's Legal Deserts

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    In much of rural Georgia, there are too few lawyers to meet residents’ urgent legal needs, forcing self-represented litigants to navigate an impenetrable system, but courts, law firms and nonlawyers can help address these legal deserts in various ways, says Lauren Sudeall at Georgia State University College of Law.

  • Reimagining Courthouse Design For Better Access To Justice

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    While courthouse design has historically been driven by tradition, it is time to shift from the classical courthouse to spaces that are accessible to those with mobility challenges, serve the needs of vulnerable litigants, and accommodate pandemic-era shifts toward remote and hybrid proceedings, says architect Clair Colburn at Finegold Alexander.

  • Why Law Schools Should Require Justice Reform Curriculum

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    Criminal defense attorney Donna Mulvihill Fehrmann argues that law schools have an obligation to address widespread racial and economic disparities in the U.S. legal system by mandating first-year coursework on criminal justice reform that educates on prosecutorial misconduct, wrongful convictions, defense 101 and more.

  • Attorneys, Fight For Enviro Justice With Both Law And Protest

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    In this moment of climate crisis, lawyers can and should use law and protest in tandem — from urging law firms to stop serving the fossil fuel industry to helping draft laws that accelerate the transition to a sustainable way of life, says Vivek Maru at Namati.

  • One-Subject Rule Strategy Can Defeat Dangerous State Laws

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    Attorneys at Ulmer & Berne explain how single-subject rule violation claims can thwart certain unconstitutional or controversial state statutes and protect civil rights in the face of state governments under one-party rule.

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