National Courts Monitor

Newsweek Notes ‘Civil Gideon’ In Eviction Issue

Updated: August 27, 2017

If 2015 is going to be the “Tipping Point” year for civil Gideon in the United States, then stories like a recent Newsweek report are going to play an important role. Writer Victoria Bekiempis calls the right to council in eviction proceedings “another civil rights movement… quietly gaining momentum.”

Some key points in her report: In New York City, some 90 percent of tenants in housing court don’t have attorneys while about 90 percent of landlords do; about one-third of persons in NYC homeless shelters arrive immediately after an eviction; some 30,000 families were evicted last year; each bed in a New York City homeless shelter costs $36,000 annually, experts say, while it would cost $1,600 to $3,200 to represent a client in housing court.

Bekiempis’ story is the sort of year-starter that gets picked up (like, say, we’re doing now) and includes important resources for anyone interested in how justice gets rationed. For civil Gideon fans, it’s already required reading, and you can find it here: Housing: The Other Civil Rights Movement.

Senator Seeks Cameras In Fed. Courts

by NCM Staff

Posted: January 6, 2015

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U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, poised to become Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, is already making increased court transparency a priority. The Des Moines Register reports that the senator “… is again encouraging the U.S. Supreme Court to add cameras in the courtroom.” His encouragement comes in the wake of U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts dedicating his year-end “state of the courts” report on technology, but without even mentioning cameras in the courtroom.

“In his year-end report, Chief Justice Roberts rightly promotes how the courts have embraced new technology,” Grassley is quoted as saying in the report from the Associated Press. “Unfortunately, though, the courts have yet to embrace the one technology that the founders would likely have advocated for — cameras in the courtroom. The founders intended for trials to be held in front of all people who wished to attend.”

The senator has introduced legislation to force the courts to allow cameras and says he will do so again. See the story here: Grassley: Put cameras in the Supreme Court

Roberts Promises Supreme Court E-filing

by NCM Staff

Posted: January 6, 2015

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U.S. Chief Justice Robert’s annual “state of the judiciary” report has brought the usual level of yawn, but his comments on court tech did catch some media. A good example is from The Washington Post, which noted that “… there is, in fact, a nugget of newsy news in Roberts’s“2014 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary”: The Supreme Court will bypass the federal judiciary’s somewhat troubled electronic case-filing system in favor of its own, expected to come in 2016. But the chief justice’s accounting is perhaps most useful for what, with a bit of between-the-lines reading, it reveals about why, he admits, ‘the courts will often choose to be late to the harvest of American ingenuity.'”

It’s not all that encouraging for anyone hoping the nation’s highest court would become more transparent, especially since issues like cameras in the courtroom seem far, far away.

Read the WaPo report here: Courts ‘choose’ to lag behind on tech, says Chief Justice Roberts

Immigration Judicial Complaints Remain Cloaked

by NCM Staff

Posted: December 30, 2014

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A federal judge has ruled that identities of Immigration Court judges targeted by misconduct complaints can remain secret, including information like gender and even location of the court. The National Law Journal reports that “… the immigration office disclosed 16,000 pages associated with 767 complaints in the lawsuit, filed by the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) in June 2013. The government released nonconfidential information from substantiated and unsubstantiated complaints. The names of individual judges were redacted.”

The government argued the public release of the judges’ names and other identifying information would infringe privacy interests. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper agreed, pointing out that the judges are career civil service employees and have privacy rights associated with that standing. That is a reference to Immigration Court judges not being “judges” in the typical sense, but are actually employees of the Justice Department.

Read the National Law Journal report.

Immigration Backlog Shows Need For More Lawyers

by NCM Staff

Posted: December 29, 2014

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This photo was part of an NBC News report (12/14/14), “Demand Intensifies for Nonprofit Immigration Lawyers” discussing how the US immigration system is seriously lacking in how it represents the poor.

NBC News is among those taking a look back at 2014 and finding the country’s immigration system seriously lacking in how it represents the poor. Says NBC, “… the past summer’s flocking of children and families to the U.S.-Mexico border, the president’s impending executive action on immigration and the two-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, DACA, have intensified demand for immigration attorneys, particularly those who charge little to nothing. With each success, they amplify the difference good legal help can make in the lives of immigrants.”

NBC has this quote in it’s Storyline report: “We’ve long known that results in immigration court, in particular, vary widely depending on whether you have legal representation or not,” said Crystal Williams, American Immigration Lawyers Association, AILA, executive director. She adds that “… what we are seeing quite honestly, is the people who are getting asylum and are getting bonded out of (the immigration detention center in) Artesia, had the attorneys not been there, they would have been removed already.”

See the NBC report here: Demand Intensifies for Nonprofit Immigration Lawyers