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Access to Justice
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April 20, 2023
NY High Court Skeptical On Murder Trial Courtroom Closure
New York's highest court suggested on Thursday that a state trial judge may have violated a murder suspect's constitutional right to a public trial when she closed her courtroom to the public halfway through an eight-day criminal proceeding because of what she called "very intimidating" behavior on the part of spectators.
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April 20, 2023
How One State Is Using Automated Forms To Boost Justice
The New York state court system has created several document automation programs that make it easier for self-represented litigants to create legally acceptable court documents, demonstrating how simple technology can be used to close the access-to-justice gap.
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April 19, 2023
Justices Back Longer Clock For Post-Conviction DNA Tests
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that state prisoners requesting post-conviction DNA testing have until after all state appeals finish before a clock for federal relief starts ticking, ending a stricter time limit the NAACP called "illogical" and race-biased.
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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.
Expert Analysis
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Artisanal Miners' Roadblocks To Justice: Is A Path Clearing?
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.
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High Court Ruling Highlights Double Jeopardy Complications
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.
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High Court's 'Separate Sovereigns' Ruling Is Good For Tribes
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.
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Border Phone Search Questions Continue In Federal Court
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.
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US Misdemeanor System Should Honor Principles Of Justice
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.
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Does Multidistrict Litigation Deny Plaintiffs Due Process?
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.
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NLRB Case Hinders Workers' Path To Justice
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.
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Immigration Enforcement Under Trump Neglects Rule Of Law
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.
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Calif. Lawmakers Should Stay Out Of USC Sex Abuse Case
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.
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Utah's Online Dispute Platform Is Streamlining Small Claims
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.
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The First Step Act Is A Major Step For Sentencing Reform
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.
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How To Improve Jurors' Perceptions Of Legal Outcomes
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.
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The Role Of Data In An Access To Justice Movement
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.
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Changing The Conversation On Bail Reform
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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The Criminal Justice System's Algorithms Need Transparency
Trade secret protections for pretrial risk assessment algorithms must be eliminated, or else criminal defendants will be unable to challenge or even examine the data being used to keep them incarcerated, says Idaho state Rep. Greg Chaney, whose bill forcing algorithmic transparency recently passed the Idaho Legislature.