PSJD Public Interest News Digest – January 12, 2018
Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives
Hello there, interested public! A terse but consequential digest includes a significant development in student loans, as the Justice Department took steps to curb state efforts to protect loan forgiveness. The Chief Justice of Iowa also had remarkably strong words for the state legislature on the state of access to justice in his state.
Until next week,
Sam
Student Loans
Access to Justice – Civil
- A pilot clinic for pro bono legal advice on Prince Edward Island extended its services into 2018. This is the second such extension of the pilot.
Access to Justice – Criminal
- In his annual address to the Iowa General Assembly on the Condition of the Judiciary, the Chief Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court warned that declining funding for courts is “beginning to tear at the very fabric of our operation and mission…Iowans are losing access to justice.“
- The State Bar of Texas published a report in which “[c]urrent and former attorneys with the State Counsel for Offenders (SCFO), which represents indigent inmates accused of committing crimes inside Texas prisons, claim higher-ups at SCFO have ordered them to change legal strategy, for example prohibiting them from filing motions to assist mentally ill clients and even forcing them to withdraw from certain cases…after their bosses consulted with the Texas Board of Criminal Justice,…[which] controls SCFO’s purse strings and all other Texas Department of Criminal Justice [TDCJ] operations [including Texas prisons themselves].”
- In the opinion section of a local paper, Washington state legislator Derek Young announced his intention to focus on achieving full funding for criminal defense during the upcoming legislative session in Olympia, WA.
- A 2015 challenge to Indiana’s public defender system, alleging it violates the rights of indigent defendants to an adequate defense, is likely to proceed to the state Supreme Court after an appeals court last month upheld a decision below to dismiss the lawsuit.
- After the state’s attorney’s office issued a bulletin suggesting hundreds of pedestrian tickets had been issued in error in recent years, local lawmakers in Jacksonville, FL called for police to stop issuing pedestrian tickets.