The Chicago Council of Lawyers is alarmed and appalled by the federal government’s decision to intentionally violate the First Amendment Rights of a lawful resident of the United States.
On February 25, 2025, President Trump issued a memorandum suspending [...]
Among the Chicago Council of Lawyers’ most vital projects are [...]
Our new report examines the Circuit Court of Cook County’s [...]
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 number of new deportation cases filed in the court system in August, putting the total number of new deportation cases at 1,230,000 in FY2023. With the court system facing this unprecedented number of cases, the initial response from the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) has been to increase the number of immigration judges.
Pretextual traffic stops occur when an officer pulls over a driver for an alleged minor infraction – an expired registration tag, say, or a burned out taillight. But then the officer uses the stop as an excuse to fish for evidence of a crime unrelated to the original reason for the stop. As alleged in a proposed class action lawsuit filed in June by five Black and Latine motorists, Wilkins v. City of Chicago: “Traffic stops on the city’s predominantly Black and Latino South and West [S]ides…are typically for minor violations—or for no reason at all—and are a tool for officers to search and detain minority residents.”
This report focuses on Cook County’s “post-plea” diversion courts. 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”) courts, which have become an increasingly popular tool for lowering the number of people in prisons in the United States.
From March to August of 2022, our volunteer court-watchers observed 230 civil asset forfeiture calls in the County Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County. Court-watchers noted a number of stakeholder concerns around innocent owners, support for self-represented property owners, procedural efficiency, and more, and brought up concerns of their own.
Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts, the Chicago Council of Lawyers, and Loevy & Loevy wanted to know what Chicago’s mayoral candidates thought about civil rights issues, so we asked them. The questionnaire was sent to the nine candidates running for Chicago Mayor in the 2023 election; all candidates answered civil rights questions except for Mayor Lightfoot, who declined to participate.
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 considers the constitutionality of the Pretrial Fairness Act. The brief, filed by the ACLU of Illinois and the law firm of Hughes, Socol, Piers, Resnick & Dym Ltd., argues forcefully that the Illinois Supreme Court should uphold the constitutionality of the Pretrial Fairness Act and allow the end of money bond to proceed in Illinois. We are proud to support the brief.
