The U.S. judiciary suffers from a trust issue among the general public, largely due to its fragmented, unusable, costly, and difficult-to-access data. That is the argument put worth in this week’s “Student Voices” blog, which suggests that improving judicial data and accessibility to it will improve transparency, public engagement in the courts, and collaboration and innovation among organizations.
Jury selection should aim for a balanced and thoughtful panel; in capital cases, that balance is further underscored. This week’s “Student Voices” post argues that “death-qualifying juries”–the practice of excluding jurors who oppose the death penalty–disrupts that balance. Those constitutional guarantees of impartiality, equality, and reliability? Not so ensured with practice. Reform options, however, are not so simple.
Heirs’ property is the group project no one signed up for. Land inherited without a will and co-owned by many families can easily slip into land unexpectedly lost when a co-tenant forces a partition. Investors then swoop in and outbid family members for the property. The pattern tends to hit hardest with “property rich and cash poor” families, and it’s contributed to a massive decline in African-American property ownership over the last century. Read about the factors leading to heirs’ property issues and the steps, so far, to reform it.
How many filings from one individual are too many for a court to hear—73 over 18 years, or 54 over a decade? What about six over 14 years by an incarcerated individual with already compromised access to justice? This “Student Voices” post looks at the history of “Martinizing,” a practice intended to curb frivolous filings; its impact on indigent litigants and access to justice; its decrease in Supreme Court debate over the years; and the dissent of Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson earlier this year that questioned Supreme Court priorities relevant to Martinizing. Could this growing practice of closing courthouse doors prevent a potentially significant future claim from ever being heard?
When Johnson & Johnson faced liability lawsuits for more than 38,000 cases of ovarian cancer allegedly linked to its asbestos-contaminated baby powder products, they got creative. They filed a Texas Two-Step bankruptcy to protect their assets while managing mass tort liability. The strategy was an attempt to tip the scales of justice in their favor. It would have likewise leveled global settlements and dismissed individuals’ right to their “day in court,” if it had succeeded. This “Student Voices” post examines the Texas Two-Step bankruptcy practice and the access to justice issues it presents.
It’s been one year since Trump v. CASA, in which the Supreme Court ruled in favor of limiting universal (nationwide) injunctions. The ruling severely cut options for large groups of similarly situated people–often poor and vulnerable populations–who cannot afford to file individual lawsuits against potentially harmful federal policies. In doing so, it also ruled in favor of creating massive amounts of fairly redundant work for courts that can’t realistically keep pace with an influx of individual, but similar, lawsuits. Here’s a look at this access-to-justice obstacle and the ways Congress could step in to provide consistent and equal protection of constitutional rights.
One approach to supporting pro se litigants in civil court (a whopping 76 percent of cases!) is to embrace “active judging”—the practice of judges relaxing formal procedures and explaining legal processes. Only problem is that judges, while open to the idea in theory, seem to have trouble relinquishing control of the complexity built into the current adversarial system. Maybe the onus should fall not on individual judges to enact change but on structural reforms spread throughout the various steps of litigation.
The Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) was signed in 1996 as a way of limiting frivolous lawsuits in federal court stemming from prisoners over such egregious civil rights violations as serving crunchy (versus smooth) peanut butter in prisons. It was never intended to harm the reasonable civil rights of prisoners. But 30 years later, criticism from human rights advocates persist while prisoners continue to face procedural and financial hurdles just to have their (often very reasonable) lawsuits even looked at by a judge. In this “Student Voices” blog, Spencer Thieme offers suggestions both on rigorous testing and updating data to make a more compelling case for legislative change.
Recent immigration proceedings have exposed the particularly vulnerable position that unaccompanied immigrant children face in court. Heavily dependent on federally funded legal aid, their access to legal representation is challenging at best, doomed at worst. This week, we bring you a “Student Voices” blog that examines the current immigration court environment–hostile to reliance on federal support–and looks at alternative paths for funding and legal right to counsel going forward.
Public defenders aren’t the only ones burdened by excessive caseloads. Prosecutors also face widespread high-volume workloads, and the result can mean delays, weak-case backlogs, overlooked alternative, and unintentional Brady violations. This bonus “Student Voices” blog proposes reforms such as randomized controlled trial research and data-informed case screening.
