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Access to Justice
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April 17, 2023
Justices Struggle To Navigate Odyssey Of Obstruction Case
Several Supreme Court justices struggled Monday to define when obstruction of justice becomes a deportable offense, with Justice Clarence Thomas invoking mythical sea monsters to suggest the court must choose the lesser of two evils.
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April 14, 2023
Calif. Court OKs Challenge To 'Spit And Acquit' DNA Collection
 A California state appellate court has found that a lower court wrongly dismissed parts of a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a controversial DNA collection program operated by the Orange County District Attorney's Office, ordering the case to proceed to discovery.
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April 11, 2023
NYC Can't Dodge Suit Over NYPD Arrests Of Floyd Protesters
A New York state trial judge has ruled that the city of New York cannot escape a lawsuit brought by five people alleging they were unlawfully arrested, detained and injured by police during the 2020 demonstrations following George Floyd's killing.
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April 07, 2023
6th Circ. Says Exonerated Ohio Man Can't Sue Prosecutor
A Cleveland man who spent 27 years in prison for a murder he did not commit cannot pursue charges against a Cuyahoga County assistant prosecutor who redacted key evidence from the man's investigative file in response to a public records request in 2016, the Sixth Circuit has ruled.
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April 11, 2023
Afghans' American Dream Clashes With Housing Crisis: Part 2
When Shir Agha Safi landed in Iowa in early October 2021 after being evacuated from Afghanistan, he was carrying little more than the clothes on his back as he was driven by a Catholic Charities caseworker to an Extended Stay America in Urbandale, Iowa, right off Interstate 80. Yet, he and the other refugees staying at the motel were initially given little food or supplies.
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April 07, 2023
DC Courts' First Pro Bono Leader Looks To Expand Services
The District of Columbia courts system announced the hiring of its first-ever pro bono program manager two weeks ago, welcoming an attorney with more than two decades of pro bono experience who will help shape the role and expand the availability of pro bono and affordable legal services to D.C. litigants.
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April 07, 2023
Family's 10-Year Eviction Saga Highlights NYC Housing Crisis
When the Solis family was suddenly evicted from an illegal Brooklyn sublease nearly a decade ago, they relied on the kindness — and ultimately the legal acumen — of a neighbor, who recently helped them secure a $275,000 settlement from their former landlord. Their case demonstrates the importance of legal representation in housing matters, and the continuing severity of the city’s housing crisis.
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April 07, 2023
NY Top Court To Weigh Courtroom Closure's Constitutionality
New York’s highest court is set to hear arguments later this month over whether a Manhattan judge violated a murder suspect’s constitutional right to a public trial by ordering her courtroom to be sealed in response to what she called “intimidating” behavior by audience members observing the case.
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April 06, 2023
DOJ Says No Right To Counsel In Immigrant Bond Hearings
The Biden administration told a D.C. federal judge that no constitutional right to counsel exists for detained immigrants in bond proceedings as it tries to undercut what remains of a lawsuit alleging several immigration detention centers are hindering attorney access.
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April 05, 2023
'Extortionate' LA Jail Service Fees Enrich PE Firms, Suit Says
A former inmate and local resident hit Los Angeles County with a proposed class action in California state court, alleging its exclusive commissions-based contracts with private equity-owned vendors amount to illegal taxes that charge inmates and their families "extortionate" fees for jail services in violation of the Golden State's constitution.
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April 05, 2023
DC Circ. Orders Due Process Analysis For Gitmo Detainee
The full D.C. Circuit has reversed part of a 2020 panel ruling that a Guantánamo Bay military prisoner, who is being detained indefinitely for supporting al-Qaida, lacks any constitutional due process rights, and ordered a lower court to revisit his substantive due process challenge to his ongoing imprisonment.
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April 04, 2023
Mich. Justice Suggests Pro Bono Fee Awards Go To State Bar
A Michigan Supreme Court justice on Tuesday floated a rule that would send fee awards in pro bono cases to the state bar association instead of the lawyers involved, as Honigman LLP asked the court to find that its fee award should not have been decimated because it represented a pair of journalists for free.
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April 03, 2023
Ark. Jail's 'Postcard-Only' Policy Axed As Unconstitutional
An Arkansas federal judge struck down as unconstitutional a county jail's policy allowing inmates to only receive information from the outside world by means of 3-by-5-inch postcards while banning books and magazines.
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April 03, 2023
Justices' Dissent Rips La. Brady Ruling In Death Penalty Case
U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan said Monday they would have voted to review the case of Louisiana death row inmate David Brown, who was convicted of killing a prison guard in a case where prosecutors failed to disclose a potentially exculpatory confession from another convict until after sentencing.
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March 29, 2023
Justices Eye Fix To Co-Defendant Confession Rule
Some U.S. Supreme Court justices suggested Wednesday that courts should consider a trial's broader context when deciding whether jurors can see a co-defendant's redacted confession, suggesting a bright-line approach leads to nonsensical results.
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March 28, 2023
Justices Doubtful On Tying Judges' Hands In Gun Sentencing
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared skeptical about the government's view that criminal defendants convicted under a particular provision of the federal firearms statute must receive consecutive sentences when also convicted of other crimes.
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March 28, 2023
Law360's 2023 Access To Justice Editorial Advisory Board
Law360 is pleased to announce the formation of its 2023 Access to Justice Editorial Advisory Board.
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March 24, 2023
Pandemic Exposed Excessive NY Child Removals, Attys Argue
A feared spike in child mistreatment amid New York City's pandemic lockdown, as the city’s child welfare system nearly shut down, never happened. In a study published last week, advocates say that proves the system regularly removes far more children from their families than necessary.
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March 24, 2023
Inside The Settlement Over ICE's 'Steak Out' Raid In Tenn.
Nearly five years after federal agents stormed a Tennessee meatpacking plant and arrested over 100 Latino workers, U.S. government agencies agreed to pay nearly $1.2 million in damages to settle a class action accusing the officers of targeting the employees on the basis of their ethnicity and using excessive force. Lead attorneys for the plaintiffs broke down the case for Law360.
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March 24, 2023
Black Miss. Judges Speak Out Against GOP Court Overhaul
Mississippi’s Republican-controlled and majority white state Legislature is pushing to install new, unelected judges in Jackson, the majority Black state capital — but Jackson’s elected Black judges are pushing back.
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March 24, 2023
Homer Plessy's Anti-Segregation Legal Fight Gets New Coda
A book about the unlikely friendship between descendants of the opposing parties in the U.S. Supreme Court's infamous Plessy v. Ferguson case upholding racial segregation has been updated to include a new coda: the recent move to pardon Homer Plessy for having boarded a whites-only train in 1892.
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March 24, 2023
How Legal Aid Groups Are Using Artificial Intelligence Tools
Legal tech companies Casetext and Relativity have partnered with several legal aid organizations to give them access to their artificial intelligence tools. Here is a look at how these groups are using the tools and what it means for access to justice.
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March 23, 2023
Mich. High Court Mulls New Rule That Helps Indigent Clients
The Michigan Supreme Court is eyeing a change to the state's rules of professional conduct that would allow attorneys to help certain clients out with transportation and other amenities during court proceedings, potentially furthering the court's recent focus on increasing access to justice in the state.
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March 23, 2023
Reed Smith's Sachnoff Remembered As Pro Bono Icon
The Chicago legal community is mourning the loss of longtime Reed Smith LLP attorney Lowell Sachnoff while celebrating his impact, which ranged from passionately advocating for the rights of transgender people and for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay to mentoring generations of young lawyers he affectionately called his "ducklings."
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March 22, 2023
Pa. Gov. Calls For State-Level Public Defender Funding
Gov. Josh Shapiro urged members of the Philadelphia Bar Association on Wednesday to support dedicating $10 million of his $44 billion budget proposal to end Pennsylvania's distinction as being the only state to not provide state-level funding to public defenders.
Expert Analysis
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Rumors Of Civil Forfeiture's Death Are Greatly Exaggerated
While the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Timbs v. Indiana ought to be celebrated by the civil forfeiture bar, it should not be viewed as a sea change — for three reasons, says Alexander Klein of Barket Epstein Kearon Aldea & LoTurco LLP.
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Ivory Coast War Crime Acquittals Fuel Skepticism Of ICC
The acquittals last month of the former president of the Ivory Coast and a political ally add to the recent string of failures by the International Criminal Court to obtain convictions for accused war criminals. The decision is drawing attention for a number of reasons, say Viren Mascarenhas and Morgan Bridgman of King & Spalding LLP.
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Why Review Title VII Exhaustion Requirements At High Court?
In Fort Bend County v. Davis, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether exhaustion of administrative remedies under Title VII is required before a court can exercise jurisdiction over a case. But many are wondering what practical difference, if any, the eventual outcome will make, says Carolyn Wheeler of Katz Marshall & Banks LLP.
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Barr Could Steer First Step Act Off Course
The recently enacted First Step Act makes significant strides toward reforming the federal criminal justice system. However, if attorney general nominee William Barr is confirmed, his oversight could render the law almost ineffectual, says Lara Yeretsian, a Los Angeles-based criminal defense attorney.
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Civil Legal Aid's Essential Role In Wildfire Response
Wildfires and other natural disasters present a wide range of often unanticipated civil legal challenges. Disaster survivors should be able to turn to "second responders" from the legal community to preserve their rights, say John Levi of the Legal Services Corp. and Robert Malionek of Latham & Watkins LLP.
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How To Stop Civil Jury Trials From Becoming Extinct
If we wait to take action until we identify all the reasons civil jury trials are in decline, trials might disappear altogether. Let's address the causes we've already identified using these important jury innovations, says Stephen Susman, executive director of the Civil Jury Project at NYU School of Law.
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Stripping The False Premises From Civil Justice Problems
When I began researching access to justice in 2004, there were two settled beliefs about civil justice problems so obvious that few bothered to investigate them. Both turned out to be false, says Rebecca Sandefur, associate professor of sociology and law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
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Cy Pres Awards Are The Best Answer
The argument that cy pres awards violate the rights of absent class members is wrong on many levels and ignores the fact that prohibiting such distributions creates far more problems than it solves, says John Campbell, a professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.
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Maybe Virtual Reality Juries Can Facilitate Access To Justice
Jury service is a terrible user experience and an unpredictable disruption. What if the courts leveraged virtual reality technology to allow jurors to serve remotely? asks Stephen Kane, founder of online dispute resolution platform FairClaims and a fellow of Stanford CodeX Center for Legal Informatics.
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A Key Legal Reform To Fight The Child Sex Abuse Epidemic
With child sex predators victimizing, on average, over 100 children in their lifetimes, the implicit danger of retaining state statutes of limitation for prosecution of these crimes could not be more obvious, says Michael Dolce of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.
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Blockchain Can Empower Stateless Refugees
Innovative blockchain-based projects providing stateless refugees with forms of identification, digital assets and educational opportunities could change the rules for this vulnerable population, say Amy Schmitz of the University of Missouri School of Law and Jeff Aresty of Internetbar.org.
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How State Courts Are Fighting Our National Opioid Epidemic
Loretta Rush, chief justice of Indiana and co-chair of the National Judicial Opioid Task Force, discusses how state courts can facilitate a successful policy response to the opioid epidemic.
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How The 3rd Generation Of Bail Reform Imploded
Thirty-four years after the passage of the Federal Bail Reform Act of 1984, we have finally seen the implosion of this misguided attempt at justice, says Jeffrey Clayton, executive director of the American Bail Coalition.
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Class Cy Pres Settlements Are A Troubling Practice
Class actions are often touted as a powerful mechanism for access to justice, but is this true when there is zero chance of recovery for class members? asks Mary Massaron, a partner at Plunkett Cooney PC and former president of Lawyers for Civil Justice.
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The Pro Bono Law That United Congress
Those who perpetrate crimes are guaranteed the right to counsel, but victims of domestic violence and sexual assault are not. With the unanimously passed Pro Bono Work to Empower and Represent Act, I envision an army of lawyers helping break the cycle of abuse, says Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska.