The Justice Bus rides this weekend!  According to Woodland California’s Daily Democrat, the Justice Bus, a mobile legal clinic sponsored by the University of San Francisco School of Law (whose students staff the clinic), the Public Interest Clearinghouse, and Legal Services of Northern California, is stopping in Woodland on 10/9 to hold a free employment law clinic.  “This clinic will offer free legal advice and referrals for all aspects of employment law from wrongful termination and wage and hour claims to workers compensation and benefits questions. Anyone with employment related questions is able to attend this free legal clinic.”

It’s great to see this project allowing students to engage with clients in under-served areas who need help.  This really is an ideal (and probably fun) way for city-dwelling students to cultivate their legal skills while reaching those who don’t benefit from having direct access to lawyers – let alone money to afford them.  And it’s not the only example of such an undertaking.  Indeed, it’s not even the only Justice Bus.  In March, the PSLawNet Blog profiled a different Justice Bus run by Arizona State law students.  And in August we covered the work of University of Detroit Mercy law students who run Project Salute, which aids low-income veterans and rolls in a “custom designed 31-foot Mobile Law Office, built and donated by General Motors.”  Our only major malpractice concern in all of this is a student driving the bus.

From the National Law Journal…

Students at Rutgers School of Law-Camden are helping federal inmates transition into post-prison life as part of a new pro bono effort.

The Federal Prisoner Re-entry Project at Rutgers-Camden pairs law student volunteers with recently released prisoners. Under the supervision of a managing attorney, the students work with their clients’ federal probation officers to handle issues such as obtaining drug and alcoholic treatment or securing housing.

“We get everything from difficulties with obtaining identification to problems stemming from people who never registered for the Selective Service,” said Todd Berger, managing partner of the project.

…

Other law schools offer students the chance to assist prisoners in re-entry through clinics, but Rutgers’ program is unique in that it relies on student volunteers who don’t receive academic credit for the work, Berger said. He initially envisioned that students would spend an hour or two each week on their cases, but the 24 volunteers have been spending more time on client matters as they develop relationship [sic] with their clients.

The PSLawNet Blog is thrilled by this development for two reasons.  First, re-entry services are desperately needed and not historically well-funded.  One of the most effective ways to prevent recidivism is to make sure a released prisoner doesn’t have the deck stacked against him/her from the start. 

Second, one half of the PSLawNet Blog went to law school with Todd Berger.  Todd did public defense work in Philly for years and is a good lawyer and good guy.  We’re happy – but not surprised – to see him leading this initiative.

This week: lots of coverage about hearings on legal services funding in New York; a “Civil Gideon” proposal in Wisconsin; $3.62 million in cy pres funding will benefit legal services providers, mostly in Illinois; changing the beleaguered Michigan public defense infrastructure?; turning a federal internship into a federal job; Attorney General Holder tells the Senate to hurry up on judicial confirmations; a deferred associate looks back on his one-year public service placement; humanizing a defendant in a capital trial is no easy feat; a call for a legal services funding boost in Texas; making the wheels of justice turn more smoothly in Philly courts (and by the way, go Phils!); the Washington Post editorial board laments the state of indigent defense funding; a sobering, and hopefully effective, fundraising effort in Texas to curtail domestic violence; a new volunteer initiative driven by a Florida lawyer; and an Indiana prosecutor stands up for his office’s LRAP program.   

• 9.30.10 – a handful of news outlets from throughout the Empire State are reporting on a statewide series of hearings about access-to-justice issues.  The hearings are the result of efforts by New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman to raise awareness about under-funding of civil legal services and to find solutions.  The New York Times and the New York Law Journal report on the first of the four hearings, which took place in Manhattan.  From the Times, we see half of the dilemma facing legal services providers: “Since 2008, there has been a 40 percent increase at the Legal Aid Society in requests for help on health care issues and an 800 percent increase in requests for help with foreclosures…”  From the Law Journal, we see the other half: “Current funding is provided through what Judge Lippman called a ‘hodgepodge’ of mechanisms…  Due to plunging interest rates because of the poor economy, IOLA revenues have dropped to $7 million this year from $32 million in 2008, and the other sources of aid have not made up the difference.”  After the Manhattan hearing, a second one took place across the state in Rochester.  Here’s coverage from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.  Chief Judge Lippman’s end goal is to craft a formal report to use in urging the legislative and executive branches for increased financial support of civil legal services.  The hearings are just the latest step in his campaign.  Earlier this year Lippman created a high-level task force to explore how to expand civil legal services for low-income New Yorkers.  He also created an “Attorney Emeritus” program through which retired lawyers can volunteer their time on pro bono matters.  Indeed, Lippman has gone so far as to call for a civil right to counsel in some matters.  Read more about his efforts in Item One of PSLawNet’s 6.11.10 Public Interest News Bulletin.

• 9.29.10 – from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, we learn that Legal Action of Wisconsin will urge the state’s high court to adopt a rule guaranteeing a right to counsel for low-income persons in circumstances “where the assistance of counsel is needed to protect the litigant’s rights to basic human needs, including sustenance, shelter, clothing, heat, medical care, safety and child custody and placement.”  This is an interesting tactic toward establishing a so-called “Civil Gideon” – a right to counsel in some non-criminal cases.  As the Journal Sentinel article notes, though, the “big hurdle” would be paying for a program if the Wisconsin Supreme Court adopted the rule.

• 9.29.10 – the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin (subscription required – boo!) reports on a cy pres award that will benefit Illinois legal services providers as well as other providers throughout the country: “Organizations that help provide legal services to the poor in Illinois and legal aid groups around the country will receive $3.62 million in unclaimed funds from a nationwide class-action settlement involving a rate increase on life insurance policies. This week, five legal aid organizations and foundations serving Illinois are expected to receive a total of more than $1.8 million of the unclaimed funds from the $93 million settlement. Another $1.8 million is to be disbursed to 111 legal aid organizations serving other states throughout the country.”  One of the Chicago-based beneficiaries is the Chicago Bar Foundation, and this makes the PSLawNet Blog happy because we’ve worked with CBF before and have great admiration for them.  UPDATE: here’s freely accessible National Law Journal coverage.

• 9.29.10 – and in our third story in a row from the northern Midwest, the Michigan Campaign for Justice is advocating that the state “create a statewide public defense system” to replace the patchwork, county-by-county systems that exist now and which have been the subject of intense scrutiny.  “A study commissioned by the state legislature on the public defense system gave Michigan failing grades in 2008 for the way defense attorneys provide counsel to indigent defendants…”, according to the Kalamazoo Gazette.

• 9.29.10 – from the Washington Post, here are some tips about leveraging federal internships into postgraduate jobs.

• 9.28.10 – speaking of the Post, in an op-ed  Attorney General Eric Holder urges the Senate to move with more dispatch on federal judicial nominees.  He recounts a few specific cases of relatively uncontroversial nominees waiting for months for confirmation hearings, and further notes that “[l]ast year, 259,000 civil cases and 75,000 criminal cases were filed in the federal courts, enough to tax the abilities of the judiciary even when it is fully staffed. But today there are 103 judicial vacancies — nearly one in eight seats on the bench. Men and women who need their day in court must stand in longer and longer lines.  The problem is about to get worse. Because of projected retirements and other demographic changes, the number of annual new vacancies in the next decade will be 33 percent greater than in the past three decades. If the historic pace of Senate confirmations continues, one third of the federal judiciary will be vacant by 2020. If we stay on the pace that the Senate has set in the past two years — the slowest pace of confirmations in history — fully half the federal judiciary will be vacant by 2020.”

• 9.28.10 – Andrew Ardinger, a deferred law firm associate from the Class of 2009, has spent the past year in a public service placement with the Oakland-based Public Interest Law Project.  He’s been submitting articles periodically about his experience to the American Lawyer.  Here’s his final AmLaw piece before returning the law firm world.  Ardinger reviews his experience with PILP, which seems to have been overwhelmingly positive: “On a professional development level, too, this experience has been outstanding. As I have noted before, there are only six attorneys in the office, and one legal assistant. It was a very warm, genial work environment, and the two attorneys with whom I worked most closely were, from the first day, obviously committed to mentoring me and helping me develop as an attorney.”  Ardinger’s experience was pretty hands-on; he drafted motions/pleadings, made some court appearances, and forged relationships with clients.  The PSLawNet Blog has been following the deferred-associates-in-public-service-placements phenomenon closely.   See our recent post on the issue, which tracks back to some of our past coverage.

• 9.27.10 – courtesy of Connecticut’s Middletown Press, here’s a pretty interesting story about capital-case trial strategy.  While the case is still in the trial phase now, prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty in the event of a guilty verdict.  The story emphasizes the public defender’s apparent goal of highlighting mitigating factors and humanizing a man who’s accused of doing some terrible things during a home invasion.  Seems like an uphill battle given the facts.

• 9.25.10 – the Houston Chronicle is late to the party, picking up an op-ed from Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht that originally ran in the Cherokeean Herald, which not only got the drop on the Chron but has a much cooler name.  In the piece, which we included in last week’s News Bulletin, Hecht laments the decline in legal services funding and, while acknowledging budgetary constraints, argues that the state legislature should appropriate funds to support the legal services community.

• 9.25.10 – the Philadelphia Inquirer reports that “A highly diverse panel of competing players in the Philadelphia criminal-justice system – defense lawyers, prosecutors, police, and others – on Friday began the difficult job of finding a consensus on how to reform the city’s troubled courts.”  Giving itself a nice pat on the back, the Inquirer notes that the panel’s creation stems from “an Inquirer series that documented a court system beset by low conviction rates, widespread witness intimidation, and a massive number of fugitives.  The newspaper reported that Philadelphia had one of the lowest felony conviction rates among big cities and that almost two-thirds of all defendants charged with violent crimes in Philadelphia were escaping conviction on all charges.”  One half of the PSLawNet Blog hails from Philly, and we recall that the longtime-but-now-former district attorney Lynne Abraham leaned toward a policy of prosecuting in very high volume as opposed to focusing on cases with a high probability of conviction.

• 9.25.10 – the Washington Post’s editorial board, using the long-stalled homicide prosecution of Jamie Ryan Weis as a jumping off point (we covered Weis case’s speedy trial woes in last week’s News Bulletin – Item 4), bemoans the “crisis in providing legal counsel” for the indigent: “Public defenders throughout the country are throwing up their hands, in some instances begging judges not to assign them new cases. According to the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, defendants facing lesser criminal charges in some jurisdictions are processed through the system without ever speaking with a lawyer, even though they face jail time and are constitutionally entitled to representation.”

• 9.24.10 – October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.  The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reports that “[t]he Legal Aid Society of Lubbock is trying to raise awareness about the problem and give the victims a voice by launching the “Signs for Change” campaign during October … The nonprofit organization is selling yard signs. The goal is to sell 136 by Oct. 1 — to represent each woman killed in Texas in 2008, which is the most recent information provided by the Texas Council on Family Violence.”

• 9.24.10 – from the Miami Herald we learn that a South Florida couple, both grads of University of Miami’s law school, has delved into the public service arena by creating “Lawyers to the Rescue,” a nonprofit operation that so far has tackled, well, a broad array of issues, including the Haitian earthquake relief effort, the Gulf Coast oil spill aftermath, as well as work with Habitat for Humanity and with local soup kitchen.

• 9.23.10 – the Indianapolis Star reports that the outgoing Marion County Prosecutor, Carl Brizzi, is pressing, in the face of budget cuts, for the preservation of his office’s loan repayment program for deputy prosecutors.  Brizzi worries that looming salary cuts will make it even more difficult for debt-laden junior attorneys to remain with the office, risking a “brain drain” effect.

The Rules Committee of the Mississippi Supreme Court is currently considering the adoption of a rule requiring lawyers to complete 20 pro bono hours annually or in lieu of that service contribute $500 to the state bar for legal services programs.

According to Justice Jess Dickinson, “the overriding objective is to make sure every Mississippian, regardless of economic status, has reasonable access to justice and that no one is excluded because he or she doesn’t have money to hire attorney.”  Recent research, commissioned by the state’s Supreme Court, found that thousands of Mississipians, like their low-income counterparts across the country, are prevented from accessing civil legal assistance because they cannot afford to hire an attorney.

The committee has received 64 letters received thus far regarding the proposed pro bono requirement, the majority of which oppose the adoption of a mandatory requirement.  An article in the Clarion Ledger shared comments from several Mississippi attorneys on both sides of the debate:

Don Lacy criticized the proposal as

an unprecedented and unjustifiable unilateral extension of the authority of the court. . . . [o]ther than perhaps the priesthood, I am unaware of any profession which requires its members, as a condition of their right to practice their craft, to contribute a portion of their income to charity.

The President of the Jackson County Bar Association, Jessica Dupont, said that while her association’s members are “‘[doing] what they can to help the poor’ . . .  a mandatory pro bono rule would be unfair and demeaning to the legal profession.”

On the other side of the debate, a young Jackson attorney’s perspective:

I understand the argument, doubtlessly voiced by many of my colleagues, that no one should be required to provide what is, in essence, community service.  Fundamentally, I agree. But the fact is that attorneys are different. That distinction exists as both an honor, and sometimes, a burden.  But under either instance, it is a badge that each member of the Bar should wear proudly.

Another supporter of the mandatory pro bono requirement, lawyer and member of the North Mississippi Rural Legal Services Board of Directors J. Lane Greenlee of Winona, believes that for at least the initial five years of the rule the requirement should be reduced to 10 hours/year.

I understand those who do not like to be told what to do, but I also am very aware of the need that exists, said Greenlee.

The blogosphere has been abuzz during the last week with commentary surrounding the proposed rule:  WSJ Blog (is the requirement legal?), Simple Justice (even mandatory pro bono not going to solve the need for civil legal services), Professor Richard Epstein’s take, and Build a Solo Practice (revisits issue of Illinois’s adoption last year of mandatory pro bono reporting).

Attorney General Eric Holder penned an op-ed in yesterday’s Washington Post, urging the Senate to avoid stalling on votes for nominees to the federal bench.  He recounts the story of a 6th Circuit Court of Appeals nominee whose Senate vote was held up for nearly 300 days despite her having the support of both home-state senators and the Senate Juciciary Committee.  When the vote finally did take place, the nomination breezed through.

Further, according to Holder:

Today, 23 judicial nominees — honest and qualified men and women eager to serve the cause of justice — are enduring long delays while awaiting up-or-down votes, even though 16 of them received unanimous bipartisan approval in the Judiciary Committee. The confirmation process is so twisted in knots that we are losing ground — there are more vacancies today than when President Obama took office. The men and women whose confirmations have been delayed have received high marks from the nonpartisan American Bar Association, have the support of their home-state senators (including Republicans), and have received little or no opposition in committee.

…

Last year, 259,000 civil cases and 75,000 criminal cases were filed in the federal courts, enough to tax the abilities of the judiciary even when it is fully staffed. But today there are 103 judicial vacancies — nearly one in eight seats on the bench. Men and women who need their day in court must stand in longer and longer lines.

The problem is about to get worse. Because of projected retirements and other demographic changes, the number of annual new vacancies in the next decade will be 33 percent greater than in the past three decades. If the historic pace of Senate confirmations continues, one third of the federal judiciary will be vacant by 2020. If we stay on the pace that the Senate has set in the past two years — the slowest pace of confirmations in history — fully half the federal judiciary will be vacant by 2020.

Federal judges have found 201 cases of DOJ proscecutors violating the law and/or ethics rules between 1998-2010.  USA Today’s foray into prosecutor misconduct reveals that “the abuses have put innocent people in prison, set guilty people free and cost tax payers millions of dollars in legal fees and sanctions.”

With help from legal experts and former prosecutors, USA TODAY spent six months examining federal prosecutors’ work, reviewing legal databases, department records and tens of thousands of pages of court filings. Although the true extent of misconduct by prosecutors will likely never be known, the assessment is the most complete yet of the scope and impact of those violations.

Although acknowledging that the instances of misconduct or negligence are not broadly representative of the federal prosecution community, the story paints a picture of increasingly faltering work from prosecutors who are either overworked, under-supervised, or willing to break the rules in order to win.

Records from the Justice Department’s internal ethics watchdogs show the agency has investigated a growing number of complaints by judges about misconduct they observed. In 2001, the department investigated 42 such complaints; last year, 61.

The department will not reveal how many of those prosecutors were punished because, it said, doing so would violate their privacy rights. USA TODAY, drawing on state bar records, identified only one federal prosecutor who was barred even temporarily from practicing law for misconduct during the past 12 years.

Keep reading . . .

This week: cold, hard cash for debt-laden prosecutors and public defenders; USA Today smacks down US Attorneys; legal services funding needed in the Lonestar State; four years in jail without a trial because the state can’t fund a public defense; LSC’s doing some financial oversight; law students aiding servicemembers who are about to be deployed (well done!); mandatory pro bono for Mississippi lawyers(?); legal services funding found for the Lonestar State (good timing!); national poverty data are out, and opponents of poverty are not going to like the news; the strain on legal services in Tennessee; LSC’s looking for a president; do prosecutors wield too much power at the expense of judges?   

• 9.23.10 – the Blog of the Legal Times reports that long overdue funds from the John R. Justice Act, a loan repayment program for prosecutors and public defenders authorized in 2008, will finally begin flowing to beneficiaries throughout the nation.

• 9.22.10 – USA Today has run an analysis piece – yes, its’ a USA Today story longer than two paragraphs! – on the state of ethics among federal prosecutors nationally, concluding that “prosecutors repeatedly have violated that duty in courtrooms across the nation. The abuses have put innocent people in prison, set guilty people free and cost taxpayers millions of dollars in legal fees and sanctions.”  Although acknowledging that the instances of misconduct or negligence are not broadly representative of the federal prosecution community, the story paints a picture of increasingly faltering work from prosecutors who are either overworked, under-supervised, or willing to break the rules in order to win.  (Also, Main Justice, an independent news organization which covers all things related to the Justice Department, picked up on the USA Today report.) 

• 9.22.10 – in the Cherokeean Herald of Texas, state supreme court justice Nathan L. Hecht reviews the recession’s impact on low-income Texans, highlights the dramatic declines civil legal services funding that limit providers’ ability to serve a swelling client base, and calls on the state legislature to once again appropriate funding in support of legal services.

• 9.21.10 – the Southern Center for Human Rights has run a piece by E. Wycliffe Orr, an attorney and former elected official in Georgia, about the alarmingly protracted murder prosecution of Jamie Ryan Weis in the Peach State.  Weis, who qualifies for indigent defense, has been incarcerated in a county jail for four years, largely on account of funding shortages that have prevented counsel from staying on to handle the complex case in its entirety.  He has attempted suicide three times while in jail.  After a great deal of litigation on the state level, Weis has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to, in Orr’s words, “decide whether poor people accused of crimes have a right to continued representation once their lawyers are thoroughly familiar with their cases and attorney-client relationships of trust and confidence have been established. He also asked the Court to decide whether the State could pursue the death penalty even if it was unwilling to provide legal representation for the person whose life it seeks to extinguish.”  Orr has joined with other practitioners to file an amicus brief in support of Weis’s position.  The PSLawNet blog shed light on the Weis case in a post last May, and we followed up with more coverage in July (see item 4). 

• 9.21.10 – a press release from the Legal Services Corporation announces “members of a Special Task Force on Fiscal Oversight charged by the Board with reviewing LSC’s fiscal oversight responsibilities and how LSC conducts fiscal oversight of its grantees…. The Board approved the Task Force’s formation on July 21 and the above members were announced at the Board’s meeting today. Chairman Levi said he may announce a few additional members in coming weeks.  The Task Force’s report and findings are expected in the Spring of 2011. The Task Force will operate independently of LSC, but is authorized to conduct its work with any necessary support from the LSC staff and to engage consultants with the approval of the Board Chairman.”  LSC had been the target of a critical piece put out by the Center for Public Integrity on July 15, which questioned oversight of LSC funds once disbursed to grantee organizations.

• 9.20.10 – the Jacksonville Daily Record reports on two students at the Florida Coastal School of Law who successfully hatched a project to provide free legal services to military reservists preparing for deployment and trying to get wills, powers of attorney, healthcare and other issues squared away.  The project resulted in collaboration between Florida Coastal, the Jacksonville Bar Association, and Jacksonville Area Legal Aid, as law students and attorneys met with their clients at a free clinic held on the 9th anniversary of September 11th.  This is just one more example of work done by law students who themselves wish to serve current and former servicemembers.  For example, see the PSLawNet Blog’s story from last August about Project Salute, run by the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law.

• 9.19.10 – Mississippi’s Clarion Ledger reports on a proposal being considered by the state’s high court “that would require lawyers to provide at least 20 hours of free service to the poor each year.”  There is debate within both the Mississippi bar and the legal blogosphere (see this Wall Street Journal Law Blog post) about whether or not traditional volunteer service can/should be made compulsory.   This question stems from the release of a report, The Unmet Civil Needs of Low-Income Mississippians, by the Mississippi Access to Justice Commission.  The report outlined “difficulties people encounter in gaining access to civil legal representation….  Between a third and half of those who apply for legal aid are turned away….  About 550,000 poor people are eligible for services, and about 30 legal services attorneys are available in Mississippi.”   The mandatory pro bono requirement doesn’t appear to be a specific recommendation made in the report, but rather one among many options the Supreme Court is considering to narrow the justice gap.   Here’s a Clarion Ledger article on the report’s release. 

• 9.17.10 – a press release from the Texas Access to Justice Foundation trumpets good funding news: TAJF is among five other legal services organizations which will share in a $2.6 million cy pres award intended to benefit advocates for the disabled.  A recent PSLawNet Blog post provides more detail, and here’s coverage from the  San Antonio Business Journal and the Austin Business Journal.

• 9.16.10 – the Washington Post covers the release of census data showing that, in 2009, “the ranks of the American poor soared to their highest level in half a century and millions more are barely avoiding falling below the poverty line.”  One in seven people “lived last year in homes in which the income was below the poverty level, which is about $22,000 for a family of four.”  The article goes on to cover the political back-and-forth about government’s role and effectiveness in fighting poverty during a recession.  (Nothing like think-tank quotes to put things into perspective!).  Also see the PSLawNet Blog’s coverage of the new poverty data, with links to other news outlets.  Finally, the Legal Services Corporation issued a press release to put the data into context regarding civil legal services: “Nearly 57 million Americans now qualify for civil legal assistance from the Legal Services Corporation, an increase of 3 million from 2008, and the highest number of people eligible for legal aid in our country in the Corporation’s 35-year history. Of the 57 million, 19.6 million were children, the Census Bureau said.”  LSC will be lobbying Congress and entreating the private sector to provide funding and pro bono support.

• 9.15.10 – the Chattanooga Times Free Press runs a thorough story illustrating the strains on Tennessee’s civil legal services system as the number of potential clients increases but funding does not.  “It’s a dilemma that led the Tennessee Supreme Court to announce in late 2008 that fixing the state’s legal aid crisis would become its No. 1 strategic priority. The goal is the same in 2010, with the court recently declaring the lack of access to legal help ‘one of the most pressing issues’ facing Tennessee’s court system.”  The problem boils down to simple numbers; because of funding shortages there are not the means to hire the lawyers necessary to serve all potential clients who face dire legal problems.  “There are only 81 legal aid lawyers who work full time in one of Tennessee’s five legal aid centers. Twenty-seven work for Legal Aid of East Tennessee, serving a client base of 300,000 out of the approximately 1 million residents statewide whose low incomes qualify them for free legal help.  It means the state’s full-time legal aid lawyers every year wind up accepting only one in five cases brought by people seeking their services, a Tennessee Supreme Court study found.”

• 9.13.10 – the Blog of the Legal Times reports that the Legal Services Corporation’s search for a new president continues.  According to John Levi, the LSC board chair, “‘We’re looking for a lawyer who has first-rate management skills. But we’re also looking for someone who understands the needs that are out there and isn’t afraid of them,’ Levi said. ‘We view this is a great opportunity for the LSC.’  Levi said that the LSC search committee will likely draw about eight or 12 candidates from the pool of applicants and select the next president from there. He said he and the other board members would like to see a president in place by the beginning of next year.”

• 9.10.10 – in an Anchorage Daily News opinion piece, former Alaska attorney general John Havelock notes that prosecutors, who shoulder enormous responsibilities in the operation of the justice system, also have extraordinary power that can be dangerous to the system if it is unchecked.  Havelock supports political appointments of prosecutors rather than elections because “campaign contributions lay a hand on the scale of justice.”  He also supports “enhancing the discretionary power of the judiciary” so that prosecutors do not wield so much influence in all facets of criminal proceedings, from charging decisions through sentencing.

“What?” is what you’re asking.  We couldn’t think of a pithy blog title so we went with alluringly vague.

Penn State Law School is rolling out a TV series that will feature legal luminaries and human rights experts staging mock trials to introduce all kinds of audiences – from high-school students to practitioners – to some of the thornier human rights issues being debated today.

From the Centre Daily Times of central Pennsylvania:

Penn State Law School created the series in partnership with the School of International Affairs and Penn State Public Broadcasting. The goal is to stage mock trials that examine complex international human rights issues. The episodes will be broadcast by WPSU and available to schools around the world to use in their classes.

Penn State law faculty member Randall Robinson, creator of the show, said he thought it would be a good way to use compelling television to bring complex issues that aren’t closely followed by the general public to the public.

The idea is to present the program to juries around the world and promote discussions about the cases and the verdicts. Background information will be available on the Web, and plans are being developed to add educational material to the web-site that could be used in high school and college classes.

The pilot episode of “World on Trial” features Cherie Booth Blair (wife of former British Prime Minister Tony “Mr. T” Blair, and a renowned lawyer in her own right) as a judge, and Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree.  The trial focuses on whether a French ban on head scarves in public schools interferes with rights to free expression.

This sounds like a terrific idea to us, particularly if Penn State is able to develop supplementary educational resources that would aid younger students in following the issues at trial.

Last week the Texas Access to Justice Foundation, along with five legal services organizations that do disabilities rights advocacy, received a record $2.6 million in cy pres funds left over from a class action in the Lonestar State.  The class action suit itself was a disabilities rights case; plaintiffs argued that a requirement that disabled Texans pay for their own blue disability parking cards – the kinds that are displayed by drivers when they park – violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Even better news for disabilities rights advocates is that the $2.6 million flowing into the legal services community is only a fraction of a larger $9 million+, the balance of which will go to other nonprofits serving those with disabilities.  Here’s a press release from the Texas Access to Justice Foundation, and here’s coverage in the San Antonio Business Journal.

For those law students wondering about how much cy pres awards help the civil legal services community, the answer is that they can be tremendous boons in terms of allowing organizations to shore up or to expand their services – which may include hiring new lawyers (hint, hint).  On the other hand, cy pres awards are unpredictable, and thus can not be relied upon as consistent revenue streams.  We’ve covered some past instances of cy pres awards benefiting legal services providers, including this recent development in Maryland, and a cy pres award in California.

One in seven Americans (or approximately 44 million of your fellow U.S. citizens) are living below the poverty line, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s recently released report on Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States.  What is the historical significance of this statistic? . . .  In 2009, there were more Americans living in poverty than in any year since 1959, the first year poverty estimates were available. 

Last year, the family poverty rate was 11.8%  and the number of families in poverty was 8.8 million – this was an increase from 10.3% and 8.1 million, respectively, in 2008.   This increase in the poverty rate was seen across all types of families (married-couple, female-householder-with-no-husband-present, and male-householder-no-wife-present).   The growth in the number of children living in poverty is especially troubling:  15.5 million children were living below the poverty line in 2009, compared to 14.1 million in the 2008.

Poverty advocates believe that federal stimulus efforts that targeted low-income earners and the extension of unemployment benefits prevented what could have been an even greater increase in the poverty rate.

For additional reactions to the Census report check out The Washington Post’s article, National Public Radio’s coverage, and a Huffington Post article by Maria Foscarinis,  the Executive Director and Founder of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty.