Category Archives: Policy Statements

Thank you to each of you who used the judicial evaluations of the Chicago Council of Lawyers to make informed decisions about judicial elections.  The Council's evaluations were utilized by VoteforJudges.org, Chicago Votes, Ballot Ready, and Injustice Watch.  More than 100,000 persons saw the Counci...

Judges make all kinds of decisions, from the very personal, such as child custody decisions, to those with much broader impact. The decisions that judges make affect our lives, both directly and indirectly, often for many years to come. We never know when a judge we vote for today will make a decisi...

The Chicago Council of Lawyers and Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice have released a statement on HB 4113....

  Michael Brennan, nominee for a lifetime judicial appointment on the Seventh Circuit, is not a qualified candidate and is far outside the mainstream of judicial thought. Brennan has been unable to earn his way through a decades-long bipartisan process for judicial nominations in this Circuit; rath...

On behalf of the Chicago Council of Lawyers, the public interest bar association that has been working for the fair and effective administration of justice for nearly 50 years, I am writing to strongly urge the reappointment of Lori Lightfoot as the President of the Chicago Police Board. Ms. Lightfo...

The Chicago Council of Lawyers has released its judicial evaluations for the November 2016 election.  The Council provides a written report providing short biographies and the reasons for its findings, both for judges seeking retention and for candidates who won their March 2016 primary and are seek...

On August 30, Mayor Rahm Emanuel released a statement on police accountability and a draft ordinance to replace the Independent Police Review Authority with a new agency. The Chicago Council of Lawyers offers its thoughts below. Chicago Council of Lawyers Communication about Mayor’s Proposed Police...

In April 2016, the Police Accountability Task Force issued their 190-page report: Recommendations for Reform: Restoring Trust between the Chicago Police and the Communities They Serve. The Report addresses many subjects, ranging from how to improve police-community relations to how to respond to per...

The Collaboration for Justice—the joint social justice effort of Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice and the Chicago Council of Lawyers—has released a report on the impact and legality of court fines, fees and costs. The report details how the recent trend of shifting court costs to low-income and in...

The Civil Liberties Committee of the Chicago Council of Lawyers has called on the state of Illinois to regulate the government's use of Stingray technology. On January 20, 2016, Representative Ann Williams of Chicago introduced Illinois House Bill 4470 to regulate the use by government bodies of cel...