Access to Justice

  • January 21, 2025

    Trump Installs New Prisons Chief, Revives Private Facilities

    President Donald Trump made sweeping changes to the criminal justice system in his first hours in office, including replacing the Federal Bureau of Prisons director brought in under the Biden administration and ending former President Joe Biden's plan to phase out privately run federal prisons.

  • January 21, 2025

    Dem States Challenge Trump's Birthright Citizenship Order

    Eighteen Democratic-led states, the District of Columbia and the city of San Francisco filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts federal court on Tuesday challenging the constitutionality of President Donald Trump's executive order limiting birthright citizenship.

  • January 21, 2025

    Sex-Shaming Murder Conviction To Be Reviewed

    The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday revived claims from a woman on death row in Oklahoma that prosecutors unfairly sex-shamed her and relied on gender-based stereotypes to convince a jury that she had killed her estranged husband for insurance money.

  • January 21, 2025

    Immigrant Orgs Sue Trump Over Birthright Citizenship Order

    An expectant mother and two immigrant advocacy organizations hit the Donald Trump administration with a midnight lawsuit in Massachusetts federal court in a bid to halt the president's executive order ending birthright citizenship in the United States.

  • January 17, 2025

    Inmate's Case Over Tardy Appeal Notice Granted Certiorari

    The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear a case regarding the proper procedure for appealing a suit after the initial window for filing a notice closes and then is reopened, an issue largely affecting pro se litigants.

  • January 17, 2025

    High Court To Weigh Repeat Federal Prisoner Appeals

    The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear a Florida man's challenge to his 24-year bank robbery sentence, a case that aims to resolve a circuit split over whether federal prisoners can file multiple motions to vacate their convictions.

  • January 14, 2025

    Ga. Cop Denies Involvement In False Murder Conviction

    A Georgia police chief accused of conspiring to falsely accuse a man of murder after a Russian roulette accident more than 25 years ago has asked a federal judge to let him out of the man's civil rights suit, arguing that he "played no substantive role" in the allegedly crooked investigation.

  • January 14, 2025

    Fed. Court, Judges Beat Atty's Challenge To 'Gag Order' Rule

    Sovereign immunity bars a Nashville civil rights lawyer from challenging a U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee rule barring attorneys from making "any extrajudicial statements" about cases pending in the district, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

  • January 13, 2025

    NY Coalition Fights For Kalief Browder Discovery Law

    New York Legal Aid announced the formation of a statewide coalition Monday to defend the discovery reform law named for the late Kalief Browder, a young man whose three-year detention at Rikers Island without a trial made national headlines before he took his life in 2015.

  • January 13, 2025

    Justices Mull Grammar In First Step Act Resentencing Case

    The U.S. Supreme Court grappled with grammar-heavy arguments Monday over whether lighter sentences under the First Step Act should apply to defendants who were sentenced before the 2018 law was enacted but later resentenced after their original sentences were thrown out.

  • January 06, 2025

    Judge Rejects Rape Kit Seller's 2nd Bid To Pause Wash. Ban

    A Washington federal judge has denied a request for an injunction pending appeal by a company challenging the state's ban on the sale of "DIY" DNA collection kits for sexual assault survivors, reiterating his prior ruling that the law passes constitutional muster because it regulates conduct and not speech.

  • January 06, 2025

    New Joint Bar Task Force To Tackle Indigent Defense In NYC

    The New York City Bar Association announced Monday that it has teamed up with the city's county bar associations to form a task force assessing the NYC Assigned Counsel Plan, which assigns lawyers to indigent people in criminal and family courts who can't be served by institutional legal service providers.

  • January 03, 2025

    Where Access To Justice Leaders Will Be Focused In 2025

    As they await the potential impacts of a new presidential administration and the GOP-controlled Congress, access to justice leaders across the country say they're headed into 2025 with an eye on issues like use of non-attorney professionals and AI technology to help address the ever-increasing need for free or affordable legal services.

  • January 03, 2025

    Inside Arnold & Porter's Win In Prison 'Rape Club' Case

    Aided by attorneys from Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, a group of women incarcerated at a California federal prison recently reached settlements with the Bureau of Prisons, including a consent decree and the agency’s largest-ever monetary settlement, to resolve claims of systemic sexual abuse at the notorious facility.

  • January 03, 2025

    Executions Rose In 2024 As Death Penalty Support Wanes

    The number of new death sentences across the U.S. increased last year, as did the number of states imposing them, but public support for capital punishment continues to be at historic lows, the Death Penalty Information Center said in a year-end report published last month.

  • January 03, 2025

    Film Captures NJ Law Grad's Fight Against Child Sex Abuse

    Brisa De Angulo won a historic international human rights victory against the government of Bolivia in 2023 over how it handled her legal case against the relative who sexually assaulted her as an adolescent, and an upcoming documentary is putting her story to the big screen.

  • January 03, 2025

    Atty Wants Free Speech Suit Over Tenn. Court Rule Kept Alive

    A free speech challenge to a Middle District of Tennessee rule barring attorneys from making "any extrajudicial statements" about cases in the district should be allowed to move forward since the court is not entitled to sovereign immunity, according to the Nashville civil rights lawyer behind the suit.

  • December 20, 2024

    Texas AG Blocks Roberson Legislative Testimony

    Texas state representatives on Friday slammed Attorney General Ken Paxton's last-minute effort to block testimony from a man on death row after his 2-year-old daughter died from what was diagnosed as shaken baby syndrome.

  • December 20, 2024

    Justice Reformers Wary Of Trump's Return, Yet Hope Persists

    While President-elect Donald Trump's impending return to the White House has many criminal justice reformers preparing for battle, given his scorched-earth rhetoric on crime and immigration on the campaign trail, hope for meaningful change persists in varying degrees among advocates after Trump's backing of reform legislation during his first term.

  • December 20, 2024

    How Akin Helped Holocaust Survivors Win Reparations

    The Anti-Defamation League recently honored a Holocaust survivor who went on to become the face of a movement seeking accountability from the French national railroad company SNCF for its role in taking tens of thousands of Jews to Nazi concentration camps. The movement was assisted pro bono by attorneys from Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.

  • December 20, 2024

    Lambda Legal Adds Attorney In NY Focused On Trans Rights

    LGBTQ+ advocacy group Lambda Legal has hired a new senior attorney focused on the organization's work defending the transgender community.

  • December 17, 2024

    Prisoners Reach Largest-Ever Settlement With BOP Over Abuse

    More than 100 women currently and formerly detained at a now-shuttered federal women's prison in Northern California have reached settlements with the federal Bureau of Prisons worth nearly $116 million to end individual lawsuits alleging sexual assault and harassment at the hands of prison staffers.

  • December 17, 2024

    Texas Lawmakers Issue 2nd Subpoena In Shaken Baby Case

    Texas lawmakers issued a subpoena to a man convicted based on a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome, marking their second attempt to hear his testimony at a House committee meeting on the state's so-called Junk Science Law.

  • December 16, 2024

    No 1st Amendment Right For Prison Interviews, 4th Circ. Says

    A South Carolina prison's policy of prohibiting interviews with inmates does not violate the First Amendment's free speech protections, the Fourth Circuit has said in a published decision.

  • December 16, 2024

    Battle Over Atty Speech Raises First Amendment Concerns

    An attorney is challenging a local rule used to gag him in the Middle District of Tennessee, saying it goes too far in restricting lawyers from speaking to the press about their cases.

Expert Analysis

  • Advocating For Disability Rights In Probation And Parole

    Author Photo

    While the U.S. continues to over-police people with disabilities, defense attorneys can play a crucial role in ensuring that clients with disabilities who are on probation or parole have access to the accommodations they need and to which they are legally entitled, says Allison Frankel at the ACLU.

  • 11th Circ. Block Of 'Stop WOKE' Act Is Good For Public Safety

    Author Photo

    The Eleventh Circuit’s recent decision to uphold an injunction of Florida’s so-called Stop WOKE Act, a law that curtails workplace diversity training, means that law enforcement can continue receiving such training — an essential step toward more equitable policing and public safety, say Miriam Krinsky at Fair and Just Prosecution and Diane Goldstein at Law Enforcement Action Partnership.

  • Prosecutors' Growing Case Backlogs Need Urgent Attention

    Author Photo

    Growing case backlogs in prosecutors' offices around the country affect the functioning of the entire criminal legal system, so the problem's root causes must be immediately addressed, say Minnesota county prosecutor John Choi and Montana county prosecutor Audrey Cromwell.

  • Context Is Everything In Justices' Sentencing Relief Decision

    Author Photo

    In the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Pulsifer v. U.S. decision, limiting the number of drug offenders eligible for sentencing relief, the majority and dissent adopted very different contextual frames for interpreting the meaning of “and” — with the practical impact being that thousands more defendants will be subject to severe mandatory minimums, says Douglas Berman at Moritz College of Law​​​​​​​.

  • Passing The HALT Fentanyl Act Will Repeat Past Mistakes

    Author Photo

    The war on drugs has failed, with overdose deaths at an all-time high despite decades of criminalization, so lawmakers should vote no on the HALT Fentanyl Act's proposal to impose lengthy mandatory minimum sentences for fentanyl-related drug offenses, says Liz Komar at The Sentencing Project.

  • Behind The Unique Hurdles Of Rural Access To Justice

    Author Photo

    While rural access to justice has become conflated with access to lawyers, the two are not synonymous, and in order to solve both issues, it is critical to further examine the role and impact of resident attorneys in these communities, say Daria Fisher Page and Brian Farrell at the University of Iowa College of Law.

  • Compassionate Release Grants Needed Now More Than Ever

    Author Photo

    After the U.S. Sentencing Commission's recent expansion of the criteria for determining compassionate release eligibility, courts should grant such motions more frequently in light of the inherently dangerous conditions presented by increasingly understaffed and overpopulated federal prisons, say Alan Ellis and Mark Allenbaugh at the Law Offices of Alan Ellis.

  • Justices' Double Jeopardy Ruling Preserves Acquittal Sanctity

    Author Photo

    The U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous decision last week in McElrath v. Georgia, barring the state from retrying a man acquitted of murder after a so-called repugnant verdict, is significant in the tangled web of double jeopardy jurisprudence for its brief and unequivocal protection of an acquittal’s finality, says Lissa Griffin at Pace Law School.

  • NY Must Address Urgent Need For Immigration Legal Aid

    Author Photo

    The recent influx of migrants to New York has exposed the urgent need for state legislators to make a long-term investment in sustainable immigration legal services infrastructure, supervision and training, say Marielena Hincapié and Stephen Yale-Loehr at Cornell Law.

  • 911 Call Scrutiny Should Not Be Used To Identify Suspects

    Author Photo

    Though the use of 911 call analysis to identify suspects continues to spread across the country, this scientifically unproven method opens the door to wrongful convictions, so prosecutors should review investigations that relied on the technique, and lawmakers should ban it nationwide, say Miriam Krinsky at Fair and Just Prosecution and Isabelle Cohn at the Innocence Project.

  • 6 Practice Pointers For Pro Bono Immigration Practice

    Author Photo

    An attorney taking on their first pro bono immigration matter may find the law and procedures beguiling, but understanding key deadlines, the significance of individual immigration judges' rules and specialized aspects of the practice can help avoid common missteps, says Steven Malm at Haynes Boone.

  • 8th Circ. Redistricting Ruling Imperils The Voting Rights Act

    Author Photo

    The Eighth Circuit’s recent ruling in Arkansas NAACP v. Arkansas Board of Apportionment, holding that private plaintiffs don't have standing to sue in redistricting cases, creates a circuit split, and, if upheld, would nearly destroy the Voting Rights Act, says William Brewer at Brewer Storefront.

  • Justices May Clarify Expert Witness Confrontation Confusion

    Author Photo

    After oral arguments in Smith v. Arizona, the U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to hold that expert witness opinions that rely on out-of-court testimonial statements for their factual basis are unconstitutional, thus resolving some of the complications created by the court’s confrontation clause jurisprudence, says Richard Friedman at the University of Michigan Law School.

  • Immigration Detention Should Offer Universal Legal Counsel

    Author Photo

    Given the large backlog of immigration court cases and the more than 70% of people in immigration detention without counsel in 2023, the system should establish a universal right to federally funded representation for anyone facing deportation, similar to the public defender model, say Laura Lunn and Shaleen Morales at the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network.

  • UX Research And Design Is Crucial For Justice Technologies

    Author Photo

    It’s essential that new access-to-justice digital tools incorporate user experience research and design methodologies to enhance access and accessibility, improve efficiency in processes and service delivery, and reduce risk, says Sarah Mauet at Innovation for Justice.

Can't find the article you're looking for? Click here to search the Access to Justice archive.
Hello! I'm Law360's automated support bot.

How can I help you today?

For example, you can type:
  • I forgot my password
  • I took a free trial but didn't get a verification email
  • How do I sign up for a newsletter?
Ask a question!