chicagocouncil – Chicago Council of Lawyers

Primary Election Judicial Evaluations for 2024 are Live!

Among the Chicago Council of Lawyers’ most vital projects are our state judicial evaluations. This crucial public service to help the citizens of Illinois vote for qualified judges. The quality of our judiciary is a critical part of our democracy, and informed voting for judges is necessary if we ar...

NEW – Restorative Justice, Community, and the Courts: An Analysis of the Impact, Benefits, and Elements “Constantly in Conflict” in Chicago’s Restorative Justice Community Courts

Our new report examines the Circuit Court of Cook County’s three Restorative Justice Community Courts (RJCCs) located in the Avondale (North Side), Englewood (South Side), and North Lawndale (West Side) neighborhoods of Chicago. The North Lawndale court opened in 2017, and Englewood and Avondale fol...

“Haste Makes Waste” in Courtrooms Too: Balancing Quality with Quantity in Response to the Immigration Backlog

Since 2017, the backlog of pending immigration cases in the United States has been growing exponentially. Today, there are over two million pending cases in the U.S. immigration court system. Over the past few months, the situation has significantly worsened, with a record-breaking nu...

Pretextual Vehicle Stops—A Pipeline to Police Testilying

Our January 2023 police perjury report convincingly demonstrates that the Chicago Police Department (CPD) has a culture that condones dishonesty, prevalent lying in court (“testilying”) and, false report-writing by police officers. Along with recommendations to improve transparency (some of which ha...

NEW REPORT | One Size Doesn’t Fit All: A Review of Post-Plea Problem-Solving Courts in Cook County

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts and the Chicago Council of Lawyers are excited to release our new report, One Size Doesn’t Fit All: A Review of Post-Plea Problem-Solving Courts in Cook County. In it, we offer a holistic picture of the scope of specialty (or “problem-solving”) cour...

NEW REPORT | I Don’t Know Why I’m Here: Observations from Cook County’s Civil Asset Forfeiture Courtrooms

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts and the Chicago Council of Lawyers are excited to announce the release of our newest court-watching report, I Don’t Know Why I’m Here: Observations from Cook County’s Civil Asset Forfeiture Courtrooms. From March to August of 2022, our volunteer...

Mayoral Candidates Answer Questions from Chicago’s Civil Rights Community

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts, the Chicago Council of Lawyers, and Loevy & Loevy asked Chicago’s 2023 mayoral candidates about critical civil rights issues to their communities. JUMP TO INTERACTIVE PAGE >> JUMP TO FULL RESPONSES >> The questionnair...

We’ve Joined 400+ Organizations in Urging the Illinois Supreme Court to Affirm the Constitutionality of the Pretrial Fairness Act

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts and the Chicago Council of Lawyers have joined the 37 members of the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice and 389 other national, state, and local organizations in submitting an amicus brief to the Illinois Supreme Court in the case of Rowe vs. Raoul, which...

NEW REPORT: Fear and Silence – How Culture, Policy, and the ”Win At All Costs” Mentality Allows Police Testilying to Thrive

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts and Chicago Council of Lawyers work together to seek evidence-based solutions to social injustices. In early 2022, we began researching the issue of false reporting and police perjury — sometimes known as ”testilying” — in Circuit Court of Cook County. Our fi...

Collaboration for Justice and the Court Transparency Coalition

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts and the Chicago Council of Lawyers—the Collaboration for Justice—are pleased to be part of the Court Transparency Coalition, led by the Better Government Association. As advocates for fair and open courts, Chicago Appleseed and the Council of Lawyers h...

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