Access to Justice

  • August 07, 2023

    Ark. Suit Over Providing Atty For Bail Hearings Is Kept Alive

    An Arkansas federal judge has kept alive a suit challenging a state court's failure to appoint counsel to indigent clients prior to their bail hearings, saying the defendants can't escape the claims based on sovereign immunity and declaring that appointed counsel provides "critical assistance" during a bail hearing.

  • August 04, 2023

    Court-Appointed Atty Accused Of 'Abysmal Representation'

    A 70-year-old Houston man who says he sat in jail without substantial contact from his court-appointed attorney for more than three years before his case was ultimately dismissed — causing him to miss the death and funeral of his wife of 40 years — has sued his former lawyer for legal malpractice.

  • August 01, 2023

    2nd Circ. Revives Honduran Woman's Rape Case Against ICE

    The Second Circuit said Tuesday that a lower court should not have rejected the claims of a Honduran immigrant as time-barred and revived her suit alleging a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer regularly raped her and threatened her with deportation for seven years.

  • July 31, 2023

    ICE Sued For Records Of Chemicals Sprayed At Wash. Facility

    An immigrant rights group filed a lawsuit Friday asking a Washington federal judge to compel U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hand over internal reports of guards at a Tacoma detention facility spewing chemical agents at people being held there earlier this year.

  • July 31, 2023

    11th Circ. Orders Reopening Of Ala. Convict's Plea Offers

    An Eleventh Circuit panel on Friday sided with an Alabama man serving a life sentence for murder, finding there was reason to believe he had never been informed of a plea offer that could have resulted in a 30-year prison sentence instead.

  • July 27, 2023

    DOJ Hailed For Goal Of Helping Pretrial Inmates Access Attys

    The public defender community is praising new recommendations from the U.S. Department of Justice aimed at finding ways to improve the ability of criminal suspects in federal custody to communicate with attorneys and access materials related to their cases.

  • July 26, 2023

    Mich. Justices Say Pro Bono Status Can't Affect Fee Awards

    Pro bono representation should not be a factor in determining a reasonable attorney fee award, the Michigan Supreme Court said Wednesday, finding a judge wrongly slashed Honigman LLP's fee award when it represented a pair of journalists for free in a public records case.

  • July 26, 2023

    Univ. Research Center Sues DOD For El Salvador Records

    The University of Washington's Center for Human Rights has sued the U.S. Department of Defense in Seattle federal court, alleging the Defense Intelligence Agency has withheld records regarding human rights violations that took place amid armed conflict in El Salvador in the 1980s and early 1990s.

  • July 26, 2023

    Brothers Say Chicago Police Tortured Them For Confessions

    Two brothers who spent 26 years in prison before their convictions were vacated in the murder of a 10-year-old boy say in new federal lawsuits that members of the Chicago Police Department used false evidence and torture to force their confessions.

  • July 26, 2023

    No Early Release For Sick Prisoner Claiming Inadequate Care

    There will be no compassionate release for a sick man serving 18 years in prison for collecting more than $9 million from Medicare and Medicaid while banned for fraud, a New Jersey federal court decided.

  • July 25, 2023

    Advocates Say Tenn. Child Services Fails To Help Immigrants

    Several undocumented children and their advocates have accused the Tennessee Department of Children's Services of failing to help them pursue legal status, saying the agency allows vulnerable children in its care to age out of a special pathway to citizenship.

  • July 25, 2023

    Brooklyn Public Defender Union To Hold 2nd Lunchtime Picket

    Nearly two years after eligible employees voted to unionize and be represented by the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, Brooklyn Defender Services employees plan to hold a second lunchtime picket on Wednesday as they remain without a contract.

  • July 25, 2023

    New EDNY Committee To Give Convictions A Second Look

    A New York federal prosecutor announced Monday that his office is forming a committee to look over claims of wrongful convictions.

  • July 21, 2023

    How Habeas Corpus Ruling May Condemn Innocent Prisoners

    To Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson, it sounded absurd: Why would legally innocent people — convicted under interpretations of the law that the U.S. Supreme Court later found to be wrong — be denied a chance to seek release from prison?

  • July 21, 2023

    'Paper Abuse': How Family Courts Feed Coercive Control

    Survivors' rights activists say that abusers use the courts to harass and exert control over their former partners. Some states have sought to pass laws curbing the practice. But the lines are tricky to draw, as they pit concerns about weaponizing litigation against due process rights.

  • July 21, 2023

    Section 8 Tenants Are Using New Laws To Fight Housing Bias

    States and cities are increasingly passing laws barring discrimination against tenants who rely on housing assistance vouchers. Now tenants and their advocates are launching a growing number of lawsuits to enforce them.

  • July 21, 2023

    Justice Sotomayor Slams Decision To Execute Ala. Prisoner

    U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor blasted her colleagues early Friday for allowing Alabama to use a death row inmate as a guinea pig following the state's "tortuous attempts" to execute other prisoners by lethal injection.

  • July 21, 2023

    ACLU Says NJ Judge Safety Law Is Used To Chill Free Speech

    Days after he questioned the absenteeism of the Police Department director during a City Council meeting, Charlie Kratovil, a seasoned local journalist and self-described advocate in New Brunswick, a city in central New Jersey, received a cease-and-desist letter.

  • July 21, 2023

    Judge Tatel On Returning To His Pro Bono Roots

    Senior D.C. Circuit Judge David S. Tatel grew up wanting to become a scientist like his father was, but the 1960s "changed everything," he recently told Law360 as he prepares to retire from the bench.

  • July 21, 2023

    Jersey City Advocates Leave Mark On Right To Counsel Laws

    At eviction hearings nationwide, where a tenant's ability to stay in their home is at stake, an average of 97% of tenants come to court with a handicap — they don't have an attorney.

  • July 18, 2023

    Illinois High Court OKs 1st Law In Nation Abolishing Cash Bail

    The Illinois Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that a 2021 state law eliminating cash bail and strictly limiting pretrial incarceration in the state is constitutional, overturning a lower court's decision that had put the legislation in limbo.

  • July 17, 2023

    Mich. Justices Say Peremptory Strike Errors Warrant New Trial

    A divided Michigan Supreme Court held for the first time that erroneous denial of a criminal defendant's peremptory strikes during jury selection is a flaw serious enough to automatically require a new trial.

  • July 17, 2023

    Mich. Chief Justice Pushes For Diminished Capacity Defense

    The Michigan Supreme Court's chief justice said the state's ban on using a diminished mental capacity defense was misguided and urged the state Legislature to rethink an "all-or-nothing approach" that recognizes only legal insanity as a defense to criminal responsibility.

  • July 11, 2023

    New Program To Help Noncitizen Soldiers Become Naturalized

    Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP has launched a new fellowship to guide highly skilled noncitizen soldiers and veterans through the naturalization process and usher them across the finish line, after the firm won litigation ensuring the soldiers and vets can apply for citizenship that was promised in exchange for their service.

  • July 10, 2023

    Wash. To Pay $100M For Pretrial Mental Health Exam Delays

    A Seattle federal judge has slammed a state agency for committing "inexcusable" constitutional rights violations by letting people with mental illness languish in local jails while awaiting trial, ordering the state to pay $100 million for violating a class action settlement over delays in court-ordered competency services. 

Expert Analysis

  • High Court's Juror Exclusion Ruling Does Not Do Enough

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    In Flowers v. Mississippi, the U.S. Supreme Court extended the rhetoric that exclusion of even one juror based on race is unconstitutional, but without further guidance, the principle the court seeks to uphold will continue to falter, says Kate Margolis of Bradley Arant.

  • Artisanal Miners' Roadblocks To Justice: Is A Path Clearing?

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    Efforts to give small-scale gold miners, who face displacement, pollution and violence at sites around the world, access to fair and functioning justice systems have met with apathy from politicians and fierce resistance from powerful business lobbies, but there are signs that this may be changing, says Mark Pieth, president of the Basel Institute on Governance.

  • High Court Ruling Highlights Double Jeopardy Complications

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    Although the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in Gamble does not change the application of the double jeopardy clause as interpreted by federal courts, the decision reinforces the significant impact of dual prosecutions and the risks for corporate and individual defendants, say Laurel Gift and Randall Hsia of Schnader Harrison.

  • High Court's 'Separate Sovereigns' Ruling Is Good For Tribes

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    The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Gamble v. U.S. — reaffirming the so-called separate sovereigns doctrine — preserves tribal prosecutors' autonomy and ability to respond promptly to offenses without worrying about the legal repercussions on federal prosecutions, say Steven Gordon and Philip Baker-Shenk of Holland & Knight.

  • Border Phone Search Questions Continue In Federal Court

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    A Massachusetts federal court's eventual decision on cellphone searches at the U.S. border in Alasaad v. Nielsen will further illustrate the differences in how federal courts apply the U.S. Supreme Court's 2014 decision in Riley v. California to the warrant-requirement exception for border searches, says Sharon Barney at Leech Tishman.

  • US Misdemeanor System Should Honor Principles Of Justice

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    The U.S. misdemeanor system — which represents the vast majority of the country’s criminal system — is under-regulated, rarely scrutinized and rife with official rule-breaking. It's time we brought this enormous aspect of our democracy into the modern legal era, says Alexandra Natapoff of University of California, Irvine School of Law.

  • Does Multidistrict Litigation Deny Plaintiffs Due Process?

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    Judges in multidistrict litigation consistently appoint lead plaintiffs lawyers based on their experience, war chests and ability to get along with everyone. But evidence suggests that these repeat players often make deals riddled with self-interest and provisions that goad plaintiffs into settling, says Elizabeth Chamblee Burch of the University of Georgia School of Law.

  • NLRB Case Hinders Workers' Path To Justice

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    A little-noticed National Labor Relations Board filing has taken the U.S. Supreme Court's 2018 class action waiver decision and turned it into a justification for further limiting workers’ access to courts, says Sharon Block, executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School.

  • Immigration Enforcement Under Trump Neglects Rule Of Law

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    What President Donald Trump and his administration have described as a “humanitarian crisis” at the U.S. southern border is, in reality, a Trump-exacerbated crisis — which demands real solutions, not incendiary rhetoric, cruelty and lawlessness, says David Leopold of Ulmer & Berne.

  • Calif. Lawmakers Should Stay Out Of USC Sex Abuse Case

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    A pending settlement between the University of Southern California and 17,000 former students would resolve claims over the actions of a sexually abusive gynecologist. But proposed state legislation could undermine the settlement, says Shook Hardy partner Phil Goldberg, director of the Progressive Policy Institute’s Center for Civil Justice.

  • Utah's Online Dispute Platform Is Streamlining Small Claims

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    By making small claims litigation cheaper, faster and more convenient, especially for those facing difficulty appearing in court due to work schedules or geographic distances, an online pilot program in Utah is resolving cases that would otherwise go unfiled — or defaulted upon, says Martin Pritikin, dean of Concord Law School at Purdue University Global.

  • The First Step Act Is A Major Step For Sentencing Reform

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    While many have heralded the First Step Act as an example of bipartisan cooperation, the mainstream press has said surprisingly little about the law's specific sentencing improvements — many stemming from recommendations made by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, says Judge Patti Saris, chief judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

  • How To Improve Jurors' Perceptions Of Legal Outcomes

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    When practitioners use methods to emphasize procedural fairness during jury selection, they can engender more faith in the justice system among potential jurors — which can extend beyond trial, says Natalie Gordon of trial consulting firm DOAR.

  • The Role Of Data In An Access To Justice Movement

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    To change the system, we need the wider community to see beyond personal stories of injustice to the “complete picture” of the lack of access to civil justice. Collecting data, indexing it and making it comprehensible is a key part of painting that picture, say James Gamble and Amy Widman of Fordham Law School's National Center for Access to Justice.

  • Changing The Conversation On Bail Reform

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    Instead of looking at “bail reform” as a choice of bail or no bail, we need to focus on reforming four major aspects of the criminal justice process that lead up to the point of bond determination, says Wilford Pinkney of FUSE Fellows.

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