There is an interesting piece about social media and a fair jury trial: 

Ensuring an Impartial Jury in the Age of Social Media

Amy J. St. Eve 

U.S. District Court Judge

Michael A. Zuckerman 

U.S. District Court

Duke Law & Technology Review, Vol. 11, 2012 

Abstract:      
The explosive growth of social networking has placed enormous pressure on one of the most fundamental of American institutions — the impartial jury. Through social networking services like Facebook and Twitter, jurors have committed significant and often high-profile acts of misconduct. Just recently, the Arkansas Supreme Court reversed a death sentence because a juror Tweeted about the case during deliberations. In light of the significant risks to a fair trial that arise when jurors communicate through social media during trial, judges must be vigilant in monitoring for potential outside influences and in deterring misconduct.

In this Article, we present informal survey data from actual jurors on their use of social networking during trial. We discuss the rise of web-based social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and the concerns that arise when jurors communicate about a case through social media before returning a verdict. After surveying how courts have responded to jurors’ social media use, we describe the results of the informal survey. The results support a growing consensus in the legal profession that courts should frequently, as a matter of course, instruct jurors not to use social media to communicate about trial. Although others have stressed the importance of jury instructions in this area, we hope that the informal survey data will further the dialogue by providing an important perspective — that of actual jurors.

Kang et al. on Implicit Bias in the Courtroom

Here is the abstract:

Given the substantial and growing scientific literature on implicit bias, the time has now come to confront a critical question: What, if anything, should we do about implicit bias in the courtroom? The author team comprises legal academics, scientists, researchers, and even a sitting federal judge who seek to answer this question in accordance with “behavioral realism.” The Article first provides a succinct scientific introduction to implicit bias, with some important theoretical clarifications that distinguish between explicit, implicit, and structural forms of bias. Next, the article applies the science to two trajectories of bias relevant to the courtroom. One story follows a criminal defendant path; the other story follows a civil employment discrimination path. This application involves not only a focused scientific review but also a step-by-step examination of how criminal and civil trials proceed. Finally, the Article examines various concrete intervention strategies to counter implicit biases for key players in the justice system, such as the judge and jury.

Jerry Kang , Mark W. Bennett , Devon W. Carbado , Pamela Casey , Nilanjana Dasgupta , David L. Faigman , Rachel D. Godsil , Anthony G. Greenwald , Justin D. Levinson and Jennifer Mnookin(University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) – School of Law , affiliation not provided to SSRN , University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) – School of Law , affiliation not provided to SSRN , University of Massachusetts at Amherst – Psychology , UC Hastings College of the Law , Seton Hall University – School of Law , University of Washington – Graduate Department of Psychology , University of Hawaii at Manoa – William S. Richardson School of Law and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) – School of Law) have posted Implicit Bias in the Courtroom (UCLA Law Review, Vol. 59, No. 5, 2012) on SSRN.

“Justice says he’ll defend same-sex marriage vote in campaign; ‘I’m not going to let them bully me,’ says David Wiggins, who joined 2009 same-sex marriage ruling” 

A recent edition of The Des Moines Register contains an article that begins,

Iowa Supreme Court Justice David Wiggins vows he won’t stand quietly by if opponents of same-sex marriage launch a potent campaign to oust him from the bench.” As most of the judges of the United States and many in Canada know Iowa voted not to retain three state Supreme Court Justices in 2010. The campaign although it was close was brutal. If there were valid concerns among the supporters of the three defeated justices that concern centered on their principled decision to ‘stay above the fray’ or not to personally engage in significant campaigning. Justice Wiggins has promised to mount a vigorous campaign.

For several years the American Judges Association annual meeting has had the pleasure of a United States Supreme Court review by Dean Erwin Chemerinski. He will be speaking in New Orleans again this October, but in the meantime a commentary he wrote for the National Law Journal is worth reading. The article  begins: 

The Court and the Fourth Amendment

The Justices tend to find a violation if they can imagine the search applying to them personally.

By Erwin Chemerinski

UC Irvine School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky

I long have believed that the best predictor of whether the U.S. Supreme Court finds a violation of the Fourth Amendment is whether the justices could imagine it happening to them. For example, the Supreme Court upheld drug-testing requirements in every case until it considered a Georgia law that required that high-level government officials be subjected to it. The two Fourth Amendment decisions this term, U.S. v. Jones and Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of Burlington County, powerfully illustrate that the justices only seem to care if it could happen to them.  

For the full article visit: 

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202551920029

Washington, DC – Law libraries can continue to play an integral role in the courts and justice system in the 21^st Century, but only if they change their orientation towards helping the public access the legal system.  A new report released by Zorza & Associates today, titled “The Sustainable 21^st Century Law Library: Vision, Deployment and Assessment for Access to Justice,” notes the vast changes to the law library landscape over the past twenty years and the potentially critical new role they can play as an access to justice resource for people without lawyers.

The Report was commissioned by a number of bar and legal groups from around the country, with the assistance of the American Bar Association Resource Center on Access to Justice and input from staff at the U.S. Department of Justice Access of Justice Initiative.

The Report acknowledges law libraries’ changing demographics: the number of lawyers and court staff visiting law libraries is decreasing at the same time that an increasing number of people are approaching law libraries for help.  As the number of people without lawyers coming to law libraries increases, law libraries must adjust the delivery and availability of their services, and the Report identifies the broad potential of law libraries to make the judicial system more user-friendly and accessible for people without lawyers and makes a series of recommendations.

“Law libraries are a huge untapped resource with massive potential to increase access to legal information and assistance for people without lawyers,” said Richard Zorza, who researched and authored the report for the report’s cosponsors.  “Because they have a long tradition of providing reference information to patrons, those law libraries that adapt to play a more significant role in access to justice efforts will find themselves at the core of a vibrant and critical system. Those that fail to rise to the challenge may find themselves doomed to irrelevance by changes in technology, constituencies, funding pressures and the law and its institutions.”

There are many examples of law libraries across the country that have already embraced this role, and now make a major contribution to access to justice.  The Report identifies best practices from those law libraries, and makes a series of recommendations for law libraries making this transition.

Cosponsors of the Report include: the Arkansas Access to Justice Commission, the California Commission on Access to Justice, The Chicago Bar Foundation, the Connecticut Judicial Branch Access to Justice Commission, the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa William S. Richardson School of Law, the Massachusetts Access to Justice Commission, the Washington Access to Justice Commission, and the Wisconsin Access to Justice Commission

The full text of the report is available at www.zorza.net/LawLibrary.pdf

Separation of powers and the ability of the judicial branch to govern itself seem like such simple or elementary principles of constitutional law. And yet after nearly two centuries, states and occasionally the federal courts continue to struggle with the issue. That struggle continues in New Hampshire. How Appealing recently reported that the New Hampshire Supreme Court has offered a proposed rule-making constitutional amendment plan.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Last Friday’s edition of The Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader contained an article that begins, “Faced with the possibility of losing the exclusive rule-making authority it has had for three decades, the state Supreme Court on Wednesday offered a compromise plan that would give lawmakers ‘concurrent’ power to regulate court administrative and procedural matters by statute.” The article says in part:” Associate Justice Robert Lynn told the Senate Judiciary Committee the alternative constitutional amendment resolution he and Senior Associate Justice Gary Hicks presented “would specifically recognize that, just as the courts have rule-making authority, which is absolutely essential, the Legislature should also have the power to make statutes that affect court procedure. And if there’s a conflict between a statute and a court rule, the statute should win unless the statute violates some other provision of the Constitution.”

A resolution to amend the state constitution that passed by the House in March would, if approved by voters, repeal outright a 1978 constitutional amendment giving the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court unilateral authority to make rules governing the administration of all state courts and the “practice and procedure” to be followed in the courts.

Judicial independence: The new threat from within

By Judge Steve Leben and Judge Kevin S. Burke

Judge Steve Leben

In election years, judges frequently come under attack for a specific decision. And since judges generally can’t comment publicly about pending cases beyond what was said in the decision itself, judges can be an easy target.

But something strange is happening as the 2012 presidential campaign comes into focus: In two high-profile court hearings, judges have struck what seems to be a partisan tone, unnecessarily inserting themselves into the campaign. Their actions from inside the judiciary threaten judicial independence just as much as attacks from the outside.

The first was U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. During oral argument about whether the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutionally coercive on the states, he asked whether there was “any chance that all 26 states opposing it have Republican governors, and all of the states supporting it have Democratic governors?” When told there was “a correlation,” Justice Scalia triumphantly said, “Yes!” followed by laughter from the audience. Scalia got his laugh line — transcripts show he gets more laughs than any other justice. But here he did so by inserting a comment about purely partisan matters that had no legal relationship to the argument being made.

Use of ‘kickback’ phrase

Judge Kevin S. Burke

Justice Scalia later made reference to “the Cornhusker kickback” in asking a question about whether the entire healthcare law must be struck down if one part is found invalid. Using the term “kickback” in reference to a provision that purportedly gave federal benefits to a state (Nebraska) in exchange for its senator’s vote sounded more like a political attack ad than the sort of question a neutral judge would ask. This too was an unnecessary comment: The provision he referenced hadn’t ultimately taken effect and thus wasn’t part of the statute before the court. The full article appears today in MinnPost which can be found at:

http://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2012/05/judicial-independence-new-threat-within. The Commentary originally appeared in Judicature which is the publication of the American Judicature Society.

The Associated Press has this report on the new construction project.   A related news release that the Public Information Office of the U.S. Supreme Court issued today can be accessed here. But the real repair focus for the United States Supreme Court might just be how to repair the Court’s relationship with the public. Only 52 percent of the American public has a favorable opinion of the court, down from 64 percent three years ago, and a high of 80 percent favorability in 1994; Pew reported that public assessments of the Supreme Court have reached a quarter-century low. Unlike evaluations over much of the past decade, there is very little partisan divide. The Court receives relatively low favorable ratings from Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike. There are virtually no partisan differences in views of the Supreme Court: 56% of Republicans and 52% of both Democrats and independents rate the Supreme Court favorably. And the decline in court ratings has occurred across party lines over the past three years. In April 2009, soon after Barack Obama took office, 70% of Republicans, 63% of Democrats, and 64% of independents held a favorable opinion of the Court.

Republican ratings fell steeply between 2009 and 2010, with the appointments of Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the court. Democratic ratings remained relatively high through 2010 but have fallen steeply since.

The weak ratings for the Court across party lines stand in contrast to most previous polls, in which those in the president’s party have viewed the Supreme Court more favorably than those in the opposite party. Most recently, throughout George W. Bush’s administration, Republicans felt much more favorably toward the Supreme Court than did Democrats. In July 2007, 73% of Republicans rated the Court favorably, compared with 49% of Democrats. This divide began even before Bush took office, triggered by the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore ruling. In early January 2001, 80% of Republicans viewed the court favorably, compared with 62% of Democrats. For the full report see:

http://www.people-press.org/2012/05/01/supreme-court-favorability-reaches-new-low/?src=prc-headline

Bruce Peterson is one of the more thoughtful judges in Minnesota. Although his practice as a lawyer prior to becoming a judge included little if any family law practice (he served as an Assistant United States Attorney and at a firm in private practice), he has a deep conviction that courts need to be more effective in family law. Since becoming a judge, he has served two terms in a fulltime family court assignment and recently established a co-parenting court. Minnesota Public Radio profiled the co-parenting court this week.

Across the U.S., 40 percent of children are now born to unmarried parents. This demographic shift, primarily among younger, low-income parents, can pose a challenge to a child support system designed chiefly to extract money from paychecks.

The court  Judge Peterson developed  is now trying a new approach, one that’s about more than just the money, as it attempts to keep both parents involved in the lives of their kids. Judge Bruce Peterson noticed a problem: Young men were showing up for paternity establishment and child support hearings, but the future of their families looked shaky.

“We were telling young dads, ‘Congratulations, you’re the father legally now. Here’s your child support obligation.’ ” Peterson says. “So it was very apparent to me there was much more work to be done to support these young parents.”

Unlike divorce cases, where the couple has a shared history, never-married parents who show up in Peterson’s courtroom may not know each other well. The full story can be found at.

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/07/152157287/never-married-parents-get-help-from-special-court

Have you made plans to attend the AJA midyear and symposium? 

http://aja.ncsc.dni.us/conferences/