National Courts Monitor

In Ferguson, Reform Begins With Courts

Posted: September 12, 2014

Confronting racial issues in Ferguson, Missouri – where the shooting of an unarmed black man by a white police officer sparked demonstrations – apparently begins with the courts system. Reports the Guardian newspaper “… some residents have described the courts regime as ‘taxation without representation’ and complained of a cycle of punishment in which they were fined for not making it to court appearances set during working hours that they tried unsuccessfully to reschedule.”

Actually, the newspaper reports that the offence of “failure to appear” is to be abolished under the new rules, along with a $50 ‘warrant recall’ fine and $15 in other fees imposed on people who can not make court dates. The city council says it wants to stop using the fines as a “source of general revenue” for the city, but critics say a plan to cap such fees to “15 percent of the city budget” would actually allow for increasing the payments.

The report also noted that “… many people in the city, which has a two-thirds black population and a police force that is 94% white, complain that the law enforcement system disproportionately targets black residents. Figures published in 2013 by Missouri’s attorney general showed that seven black drivers were stopped by police in the city for every white driver.”

Read the story here: Ferguson reform to courts system could leave residents paying more

Asbestos Litigation Summit Tackles Issues of Trust

by NCM Staff

Updated: March 19, 2015

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CCM Publisher Sara Warner lights up the Huffington Post again with her latest blog.

The insular and well-heeled world of American asbestos litigation is gathering atop San Francisco’s Nob Hill this week for what amounts to an annual current-events snapshot, and this year things may get a bit testy in the industry triangle of plaintiff attorneys, defense firms and insurance companies. Read More.

AP: Immigration Court Backup Tops 400,000 cases

by NCM Staff

Updated: October 23, 2014

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With more than 75,000 new cases over the past 12 months, the backlog of pending deportation cases in federal immigration courts has topped 400,000, reports the Associated Press. Citing an analysis released by the Transactional Records Access Clearing, or TRAC, at Syracuse University.

The AP offers some background that “… the large and growing court backlog has led to yearslong waits for immigration cases to be completed. Earlier this year, the Justice Department announced plans to move cases of unaccompanied immigrant children to the top of the docket.” That “rocket docket” approach is under legal challenge by civil rights groups, as is the practice of not providing legal representation to those children facing deportation.

Read the story here.

Immigration ‘Rocket Docket’ Raises Ire In S.F.

by NCM Staff

Updated: October 23, 2014

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Local officials in San Francisco are raising issues with the Department of Justice “rocket docket” for unaccompanied Central American minors who were caught or surrendered to authorities at the U.S. border. The San Francisco Bay Guardian newspaper is reporting that courts are now “… cramming through as many as 50 cases daily.”

“This new docket is dramatically accelerating the pace for the cases of newly arrived, traumatized children and families from Central America,” Robin Goldfaden of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Bay Area wrote in an email to the Bay Guardian. “For many, a wrong decision can mean being sent back to unspeakable harm – brutal beatings, rapes, even death. … But nonprofit legal services providers, already stretched beyond capacity, simply do not have the number of attorneys and other staff required to meet the ever-rising level of need.”

At the Sept. 2 Board of Supervisor’s meeting, one county official proposed a budgetary supplemental to allocate $1.2 million for legal representation for unaccompanied youth being processed in immigration court in the Bay Area. “Under international law, many of these kids would actually qualify as refugees,” said the official. “And many of them have cases that would allow them to be protected by immigration law in the US…”

Read the story here: Kids pushed through immigration court at lightning speed while supes debate legal aid funding | SF Politics

Unaccompanied Child Lawsuit Gets Federal Hearing, And It’s A Mess

by NCM Staff

Updated: October 23, 2014

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Politico’s David Rogers has one of the better reports on that federal court hearing in Seattle over the issue of providing legal counsel to the unaccompanied children migrating to the U.S. from nations other than Mexico, and it was not pretty. Rodgers begin the story by noting that the case is “… dramatizing the split personality in the Obama administration over the question of providing counsel to child migrants faced with deportation hearings.”

He supports that statement by recalling that “… no less than Attorney General Eric Holder told the Senate last year that it is ‘inexcusable’ that young children “have immigration decisions made on their behalf, against them, whatever and they’re not represented by counsel. That’s simply not who we are as a nation.”

Somehow avoiding references to Kafka and/or Joseph Heller (we assume through sheer force of will), Politico offers this summary from one of the immigration experts: “That’s the genesis of the whole jurisdictional problem that we have here. It’s the reason why the counsel claim is always ruled out and can never be heard in the court of appeals. For children who have counsel, it’s moot because they have counsel. Children who don’t have counsel don’t have the ability to file a board of immigration appeal.”

Read more of the telling report here: Migrants’ right to counsel argued