Access to Justice

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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."

  • 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.

  • March 21, 2023

    Bipartisan Report Recommends Axing Mandatory Minimums

    A new study co-chaired by Sally Yates, the Obama administration's former deputy attorney general, and former Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy recommends doing away with mandatory minimum sentences and increasing parole opportunities to cut down on long prison sentences, which they say are often wasteful and ineffective.

  • March 17, 2023

    Georgetown Tech Program To Begin In Tenn., Utah, Kan.

    The Georgetown University Law Center has announced the first three court projects selected for its inaugural Judicial Innovation Fellowship, which will embed technologists and software designers in state, local and tribal courts to develop tech-based solutions to improve access to the judicial system.

  • March 10, 2023

    Stoel Rives, Dorsey Attys Break Ground For Minn. Detainees

    In a win for two Minnesota Sex Offender Program patients left waiting for more than two years after being deemed eligible to move out of lockdown confinement, attorneys at Stoel Rives LLP and Dorsey & Whitney LLP recently secured a significant ruling requiring speedier state action on court-ordered transfers.

  • March 10, 2023

    Attys Work To Take The 'Civil' Out Of Civil Forfeiture

    A case pending before the Nevada Supreme Court is the latest in a nationwide battle to try and make civil forfeiture, a process through which the government can seize property from criminal defendants, a part of criminal court proceedings. Critics of civil forfeiture say that conducting seizures through separate civil cases violates double jeopardy and due process protections, and deprives those facing forfeiture of legal representation.

  • March 10, 2023

    NY Lawmakers Renew Push To Ban 'Predatory' Court Fees

    New York levies a mandatory surcharge on every criminal conviction, whether it’s for a violation, a misdemeanor or a felony. In some cases, court fees can add up to hundreds of dollars, and critics say the levies fall disproportionately on the backs of low-income residents. A proposed bill would eliminate them.

  • March 08, 2023

    Senate Votes Down DC's Revised Criminal Code

    The U.S. Senate voted Wednesday 81-14-1 to block Washington, D.C.'s revised criminal code from taking effect, a move that would leave in place a 122-year-old code that's been described as unclear and piecemeal, and highlights the district's unique hurdles to self-governance.

Expert Analysis

  • Rumors Of Civil Forfeiture's Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

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    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.

  • Ivory Coast War Crime Acquittals Fuel Skepticism Of ICC

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    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.

  • Why Review Title VII Exhaustion Requirements At High Court?

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    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.

  • Barr Could Steer First Step Act Off Course

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    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.

  • Civil Legal Aid's Essential Role In Wildfire Response

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    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.

  • How To Stop Civil Jury Trials From Becoming Extinct

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    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.

  • Stripping The False Premises From Civil Justice Problems

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    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.

  • Cy Pres Awards Are The Best Answer

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    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.

  • Maybe Virtual Reality Juries Can Facilitate Access To Justice

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    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.

  • A Key Legal Reform To Fight The Child Sex Abuse Epidemic

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    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.

  • Blockchain Can Empower Stateless Refugees

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    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.

  • How State Courts Are Fighting Our National Opioid Epidemic

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    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.

  • How The 3rd Generation Of Bail Reform Imploded

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    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.

  • Class Cy Pres Settlements Are A Troubling Practice

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    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.

  • The Pro Bono Law That United Congress

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    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.

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