The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has issued new judicial ethics rules requiring judges to step down in cases involving big campaign contributors. Pennsylvania joins a growing group of states in which ethics rules address campaign cash from lawyers and litigants.
This article appears in The Denver Post. Chief Justice Bender had only a relatively short tenure as Colorado’s Chief Justice, but he made the most of it. As the article points out, he was relentless in his advocacy for improving the system of justice. Chief Justice Bender was among the state court community’s most ardent advocate for procedural fairness.
The New York Times‘s Adam Liptak reports on McCullen v. Coakley, in which the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments this Wednesday.
The Court is asked to rule on the constitutionality of Massachusetts’s law prohibiting anti-abortion protesters from entering a 35-foot buffer zone around abortion clinics — a challenge to the Court’s 2000 decision in Hill v. Colorado.
For the full article, go here (log in required).
A lot has been written and said about the War on Poverty. 50 years ago, President Johnson announced the war. Poverty is not something that judges typically write about, but poverty drives so much of what courts deal with.
This commentary in MinnPost is my contribution to the debate about poverty. The commentary begins:
President Johnson’s War on Poverty was not the first political war, and it won’t be the last. The War on Poverty is part of a litany of metaphors about war. We have had the War on Cancer, War on Drugs, War on Gangs, War on Women. We have had real wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and President George W. Bush’s War on Terror. If you are a regular watcher of Fox News or “The Daily Show,” our most recent war is the War on Christmas.
President Lyndon B. Johnson set a broad agenda when he said on Jan. 8, 1964, “This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional War on Poverty in America. … It will not be a short or easy struggle, no single weapon or strategy will suffice, but we shall not rest until that war is won. The richest nation on earth can afford to win it. We cannot afford to lose it.” Less than a year later the key elements in the War on Poverty were created; they included Head Start, Job Corps, Vista, Upward Bound, Foster Grandparents, Community Action.
The Washington Post has an interesting story about the United States Supreme Court that begins:
By the numbers, the Supreme Court is headed for a great fallow period.
Over the approximately next 100 days, it will hear oral argument in only 25 cases. Despite taking eight new pleas Friday, the court’s workload this term might reach a new low: In its March sitting, it will consider only half its usual number of cases.
And yet, as recent days have shown, the court is as central as ever…
The full story can be found here.
The Wall Street Journal Law Blog reports that the Iowa Supreme Court is considering it:
To be a lawyer, you need a license. But there are exceptions to the rule.
Iowa is considering a proposal that would allow law students and recent graduates who haven’t passed the bar to practice law under special circumstances.
The Iowa Supreme Court is seeking comment on the plan, which has two main parts. One change would let a graduate of a “reputable law school” who has applied to take the bar to practice under supervision on behalf of the state attorney general’s office, a county attorney’s office, a public defender or an approved legal aid group.
The new rules, if approved, would also make it clear that law students who have completed at least three semesters may represent clients in quasi-judicial administrative hearings without having a licensed attorney present.
The proposed changes are backed by Iowa Legal Aid, which says it’s understaffed and thinks the rule changes could help it serve more needy clients. Responses to the plan are due in March.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts used his year-end report for 2013 to call for more funding for federal courts.
Among other things in the Chief Justice’s report, he wrote that “a hard freeze at the sequester level” would extend an emergency $15-per-hour rate reduction for private lawyers representing indigent criminal defendants, and reduced security for court personnel. It would also “pose a genuine threat to public safety” by postponing criminal trials, while delays on the civil side would mean “commercial uncertainty, lost opportunities and unvindicated rights.”
Chief Justice Roberts also referenced the seasonally appropriate “A Christmas Carol,” by Charles Dickens, to guide a “look at what has made our federal court system work in the past, what we are doing in the present to preserve it in an era of fiscal constraint, and what the future holds if the judiciary does not receive the funding it needs.”
“The impact of the sequester was more significant on the courts than elsewhere in the government, because virtually all of their core functions are constitutionally and statutorily required,” Roberts wrote. “Unlike most Executive Branch agencies, the courts do not have discretionary programs they can eliminate or postpone in response to budget cuts.”
Roberts noted that while the judiciary recognizes the need for frugality, its operating costs are only 0.2 percent of the federal budget and it has been making austerity moves for years, even before the sequester went into effect. Because courts cannot manage their caseload, however, Roberts said the effects of sequestration hit them harder.
As reported by Professor Doug Berman in the Sentencing Law & Policy blog (January 1st post):
[T]his year’s report, which can be accessed here, also includes a couple notable criminal justice caseload statistics as well as introductory paragraphs worthy of a poetic blogger. Here is the how the 15-page report gets started and its criminal caseload details:
The year’s end brings predictable constants, including the revival of favorite phantoms —Scrooge’s ghosts and George Bailey’s guardian angel — who step out from the shadows for their annual appearance and then fade away. Who doesn’t welcome the familiarity of the seasonal cycles, or retelling classic stories that, at their core, contain important truths? There are, however, some cycles from which we would all wish a break. At the top of my list is a year-end report that must once again dwell on the need to provide adequate funding for the Judiciary.
I would like to choose a fresher topic, but duty calls. The budget remains the single most important issue facing the courts. This year, however, let’s take a page from Dickens and Capra. Let’s look at what has made our federal court system work in the past, what we are doing in the present to preserve it in an era of fiscal constraint, and what the future holds if the Judiciary does not receive the funding it needs…
After rising four percent in 2012, filings in the regional courts of appeals dropped two percent to 56,475 in 2013. Appeals involving pro se litigants, which amounted to 51 percent of filings, fell one percent. Criminal appeals decreased 13 percent…
Vanessa MacDonnell (University of Ottawa – Common Law Section) has posted The Jury Vetting Cases: New Insights on Jury Trials in Criminal Cases?, ((2013), 63 Supreme Court L Rev (2d) 419), on SSRN.
Here is the abstract:
In this article I discuss the Supreme Court of Canada’s decisions in the jury vetting cases of R v Yumnu, R v Emms, and R v Davey. I suggest that while the Supreme Court’s ruling goes a long way toward eliminating the concerns associated with jury vetting, there is a disconnect between the Court’s description of the jury selection process and how counsel tend to think about jury selection in criminal trials. While counsel are limited in their ability to influence the jury selection process, the Court might nevertheless have considered whether a full ban on jury vetting was needed to combat the risk – both real and perceived – that the Crown might act unethically during the jury selection process. I also examine whether the Court’s comments about the essential and inalienable features of the jury contribute to our understanding of the right to trial by jury enshrined in s 11(f) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“A First Look at Navarette v. California: Are Stops Governed by the Rules of Terry or By Case-by-Case Reasonableness?”
Orin Kerr has this post at The Volokh Conspiracy.
The well-worth reading post begins:
On January 21st, the Supreme Court will hear argument in Navarette v. California, a Fourth Amendment case on whether an officer who receives an anonymous tip regarding drunk driving must corroborate the dangerous driving before stopping the car. Reading through the briefing in the case, I was struck by the surprising argument advanced by the state of California and (to some extent) by the United States. In this post I’ll explain the argument, and why it makes Navarette a much more interesting case than it first seemed.
When the Court granted cert, I thought that the issue in Navarette was just about the standard of “reasonable suspicion,” the standard required to make a Terry stop. But the California brief takes a different approach. Instead of just asking when “reasonable suspicion” exists, California asks the Court engage in interest balancing on a case-by-case basis. In California’s view, the reasonableness of a stop isn’t based on whether Terry‘s reasonable suspicion standard has been satisfied in the abstract. Instead, California sees Terry as merely one application of reasonableness balancing, and it asks the Court to engage in interest balancing afresh by considering the nature of the crime to be investigated when assessing whether the stop was reasonable. The basic idea is that drunk driving is so serious a problem that stopping a car for suspected drunk driving requires less cause than would a stop for a less serious offense. The more serious the crime, the less suspicion is needed.
There is obvious tension between the court’s role to be a public institutions that is transparent, and the desire of litigants to keep the terms of their settlements private.
Efficacy leads some judges to fairly routinely accept confidential settlements, and the media rarely is there to object. But, recent developments in the 7th Circuit are worth following.
The National Law Journal reports:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has refused to allow the sealing of settlement agreements in two civil actions, citing the “presumption of public access to judicial records.”
Regarding one of the cases, Judge Richard Posner wrote, the information is important to future negotiations over attorneys’ fees in cases in which the plaintiff is a minor. “[N]o good reason—in fact no reason at all—has been given for thinking that concealment of the information would serve some social purpose,” he wrote.
The court issued the joint ruling on Thursday denying a motion to seal in Goesel v. Boley International (H.K.) Ltd. and dismissing a similar motion in Massuda v. Panda Express Inc.
Goesel involves Chicago firm Williams, Bax & Saltzman’s motion to keep the personal injury settlement and information about the lawyers’ costs and fees under seal pending an appeal of U.S. District Judge Milton Shadur’s June 2013 order cutting Williams Bax’s fee.
In Massuda, U.S. District Judge Ronald Guzmán in July 2013 dismissed most claims in a breach of fiduciary duty case, holding that those claims were derived from the parties’ previously settled case.
Posner began by acknowledging that “there will rarely be a good reason” to disclose the terms of settlements made without court action, even if they’re filed in court as part of the process of closing a case. Posner contrasted that with situations when the court does take action.
For the full story, go here (registration required).
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