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A U.S. Supreme Court decision that frees a California jail from implementing stricter health measures amid the coronavirus pandemic comes as advocates and health experts warn that such facilities are a "powder keg" for COVID-19 and that authorities must do more to prevent outbreaks.
The COVID-19 pandemic has complicated how attorneys everywhere serve their clients. For lawyers who serve older Native Americans in rural parts of Oklahoma, that has meant getting creative to safely continue their work.
As associate director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Janai Nelson helps to oversee operations and steer the strategic vision of the 80-year-old civil rights organization, whose work she says is more important now than ever.
A series of high-profile officer-involved killings has thrown a spotlight on police oversight. As the federal government steps back from providing departments with road maps for reform, a number of cities are hiring private attorneys to do the job, which some say could help lend credibility to findings and diffuse political tension.
An Ohio appeals court on Thursday upheld a $50 million jury verdict in favor of a man who said he was detained without probable cause, beaten and kept in a storage closet for four days by East Cleveland police.
The New York Office of Court Administration on Friday said that a pause on evictions and most related proceedings remains in place, perpetuating an uneasy status quo for tenants, landlords and their attorneys.
A Mississippi federal judge has begrudgingly granted qualified immunity to a police officer accused of violating a Black motorist's civil rights during a traffic stop, saying the U.S. Supreme Court should reconsider the legal doctrine that serves as de facto absolute immunity for law enforcement.
Recent political attacks that have destabilized the Polish judiciary and democracy serve as a warning as the U.S. grapples with an uptick in partisan attacks that also threaten to undermine judicial independence, according to jurists on an American Bar Association panel.
Nearly half of the United States' counties have fewer than one attorney for every resident and the coronavirus pandemic threatens to intensify the rural area-centered problem of "legal deserts," according to panelists at a recent American Bar Association conference.
A yearlong investigation into allegations of excessive bail practices by Philadelphia arraignment judges ended with a whimper last week as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected calls for wholesale reform, but advocates say they hope a series of recommendations will help protect criminal defendants from being jailed simply because they're poor.
The execution of Joseph Woods went terribly wrong, lasting nearly two hours and prompting officials to turn off the audio feed for observers. Sidley Austin's recent court win should help prevent a repeat scenario in Arizona.
Perkins Coie, Gibson Dunn and other BigLaw firms have jumped into racial justice battles in recent weeks, backing organizations and individuals who assert the Trump administration and local authorities are violating the U.S. Constitution in their response to protests over the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
A California federal judge on Wednesday thwarted nonprofits' attempt to join a long-running class action defending the rights of detained migrant children, finding that the children's current attorney has offered "more than adequate representation" despite the nonprofits' claims.
The first of seven offices focused on solving cold cases involving missing and murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives recently opened in Minnesota during a visit by Ivanka Trump to promote a newly established presidential task force that targets the crisis.
While the U.S. Supreme Court in July allowed federal authorities to execute three individuals using lethal injection, its rulings did not go as far as greenlighting executions for the nearly 60 prisoners who are currently on death row in federal prisons, several legal experts on capital punishment said.
As the practitioner-in-residence at Columbia University's Eric H. Holder Jr. Initiative for Civil and Political Rights, Alexis Hoag is teaching the lawyers of tomorrow about "movement lawyering," a grassroots style of advocacy that she believes is critical to increasing access to justice.
In commuting the sentence of Republican political operative Roger Stone earlier this month, President Donald Trump highlighted his 67-year-old friend's age and medical conditions. State and national advocates for elderly parole say his logic should lead to the release of far more people, especially during a pandemic.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause economic upheaval, 97% of legal aid organizations funded by the Legal Services Corp. anticipate a sharp increase in the need for legal aid for issues such as eviction, foreclosure and consumer debt, according to a new survey.
Recent court orders requiring the government to release migrant children from detention — but not their parents — could usher in another family separation crisis and pave the way for prolonged detention of families.
Federal executions resumed last week following a 17-year hiatus, greenlighted by a spate of late-night divided orders from the U.S. Supreme Court that have sparked calls from dissenting justices to revisit the constitutionality of the death penalty.
Two years after filing a class action behalf of teenagers held in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Kirkland & Ellis and its nonprofit partners at the National Immigrant Justice Center and the American Immigration Council won a major court victory saying that the agency had not followed proper procedure.
The most diverse and progressive field to ever compete for the position of Manhattan district attorney participated in a virtual forum last week, tackling questions about bail reform, police brutality and the tenure of current DA Cy Vance Jr., who's yet to announce whether he'll seek a fourth term.
Julian Hill, a lawyer and grassroots organizer from Harlem, joined a celebratory Black-led bicycle ride through Central Brooklyn last month on Juneteenth, the anniversary of the day in 1865 when Union troops arrived in Texas with news that slavery had been abolished.
The botched drug raid that killed Breonna Taylor has made her name a rallying cry for police accountability. But her death also raises thorny Fourth Amendment questions about whether the search of her apartment was invalid even before police shot her.
Ronal Serpas ended his 34-year law enforcement career to teach at Loyola University in 2014, but he hasn’t given up on police reform. Here, the co-chair of the Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime & Incarceration explains why police reform is an access to justice issue.
With self-isolation and social distancing now the norm during the COVID-19 pandemic, Law360 is sharing reactions from around the business and legal community. Today's perspective comes from Rebecca Sandefur, a professor at Arizona State University and faculty fellow of the American Bar Foundation.
All states should follow Florida's lead and reduce the number of people held in jails unnecessarily during the pandemic, and use this tragic time as a catalyst to make lasting, long overdue changes in our criminal justice system, says Matt Morgan at Morgan & Morgan.
With the coronavirus already infiltrating certain prison populations, jail officials must look to cases stemming from the 2009 swine flu epidemic for guidance on their legal obligations under the Eighth Amendment, say attorneys at Bradley Arant.
While the conviction and sentencing of Harvey Weinstein was a watershed moment, and vindication for the women that he abused, the scales of justice remain tipped against women in cases of sexual assault and harassment in the U.S. and around the world, say Jennifer Klein at Time's Up and Rachel Vogelstein at the Council on Foreign Relations.
With Harvey Weinstein's defense team raising allegations of undisclosed bias among the jurors who convicted him, it's a good time to examine why it may be best if your client is not present during the jury selection process, says Christina Marinakis at Litigation Insights.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Hernandez v. Mesa, barring a Mexican family’s remedies for the fatal cross-border shooting of their son by a federal agent, sweeps broadly toward curtailing constitutional remedies for similarly aggrieved U.S. citizens, says Cori Alonso-Yoder at American University Washington College of Law.
That a New York state jury convicted Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault and rape — in the absence of substantial corroborating evidence and despite challenges to the accusers' credibility — suggests that society has turned a corner, says professor Stephen Gillers at NYU School of Law.
New York's Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act was enacted to reduce sentences for people like Nicole Addimando, who was just given 19 years to life in prison for killing her sadistically abusive partner, so the court’s failure to apply it here raises the question of whether it will be applied at all, say Ross Kramer and Nicole Fidler at Sanctuary for Families.
While arbitration is a good vehicle for ensuring timely dispute resolution, the existing system lacks protections for workers and consumers, and legislative efforts to outlaw forced arbitration prove it’s time to finally fix it, says Gerald Sauer at Sauer & Wagner.
While many judges say there isn’t much criminal defense attorneys can do at sentencing hearings, retired U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner — an outspoken critic of the federal sentencing guidelines — disagrees, says criminal defense attorney Alan Ellis.
Nationwide, law enforcement agencies rely on a four-pronged attack to generate billions of dollars in civil forfeiture revenue to use for police perks, depriving defendants of property without due process of law, says Daryl James of the Institute for Justice.
As criminal justice reform advocates focus on the critical need to reduce unjust pretrial detention, jurisdictions must commit to a range of policy changes that include, but also go beyond, risk assessments, says former Wisconsin Judge Jeffrey Kremers.
Pending U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services proposals to prolong employment ineligibility and charge for employment authorization documents would be particularly detrimental to already-vulnerable LGBTQ asylum seekers, says Richard Kelley at the DC Volunteer Lawyers Project.
A hearing in the Jeffrey Epstein case featuring victim impact statements and a White House meeting between a hit-and-run driver and the victim's parents have been described as restorative justice, but the reality is more complex, says Natalie Gordon of DOAR.
On topics ranging from public trial rights to electronic monitoring technology to the rules of evidence in the context of sexual harassment trials, 2019 brought a wide array of compelling commentary from the access to justice community.