Latest News – Page 13 – Chicago Council of Lawyers

Due Process Must Be Protected

–Sadaf Misbah, summer fellow at Chicago Appleseed Over the weekend, President Trump proposed depriving undocumented immigrants of their due-process rights. In this message via Twitter, the President announced his intention to implement “zero tolerance” when it comes to immigrants crossing t...

Associate Judge Process Has Potential but Diversity Still Not Optimal

Posted by Elizabeth Monkus on June 12, 2018 Improving diversity on the bench requires critical assessment of how judges are elected and selected; citizen oversight and participation is necessary. We believe the associate judge process this year is a reminder toward vigilance in improving represen...

Joint Statement of the Chicago Council of Lawyers and Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice on the recent decision in Matter of A-B-

Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice and the Chicago Council of Lawyers join with the immigration and domestic violence legal communities in condemning the U.S. Attorney General’s June 11, 2018 decision in Matter of A-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 315 (A.G. 2018) which reverses long-standing protections to pers...

Joint Statement Against Reinstatement of the Death Penalty in Illinois

Following the advancement of House Floor Amendment 1 to SB 2580, a wrong-headed measure to reinstate the death penalty in Illinois, Chicago Council of Lawyers and Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice release the following statement in opposition: Joint Statement Against Reinstating the Death Penalty i...

Unofficial Judicial Election Results

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...

Evidence-Based Reform and Gun Violence

Chicago Appleseed and Chicago Council of Lawyers have joined a letter urging Congress to formally repeal the Dickey Amendment that currently creates an effective ban on federal health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) from conducting research into the causes, effects, and evidence-...

Chicago Council of Lawyers Releases Judicial Evaluations for the March 20, 2018 Primary

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...

Letter to the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin: We won’t know if bail reform is working until the public has the necessary data

This op-ed appeared in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin on March 1, 2018. Last summer, Cook County Circuit Court Chief Judge Timothy Evans issued an order directing judges to set monetary bonds only in amounts that people can pay. The order was designed to bring judicial practice in line with state la...