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Proposed Amendments To The Federal Judicial Misconduct Rules: Comments And Suggestions, Arthur D. Hellman Oct 2014

Proposed Amendments To The Federal Judicial Misconduct Rules: Comments And Suggestions, Arthur D. Hellman

Testimony

In 2008, the Judicial Conference of the United States – the administrative policy-making body of the federal judiciary – approved a revised set of rules for handling complaints of misconduct or disability on the part of federal judges. Moving away from the decentralizing approach of the pre-2008 Illustrative Rules, the new rules were made binding on all of the federal judicial circuits.

On September 2, 2014, the Conference’s Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability (Conduct Committee) issued a set of draft amendments to the Rules. The announcement invited comments on the proposed amendments. This statement was submitted in response to …


Cy Pres In Class Action Settlements, Rhonda Wasserman Jan 2014

Cy Pres In Class Action Settlements, Rhonda Wasserman

Articles

Monies reserved to settle class action lawsuits often go unclaimed because absent class members cannot be identified or notified or because the paperwork required is too onerous. Rather than allow the unclaimed funds to revert to the defendant or escheat to the state, courts are experimenting with cy pres distributions – they award the funds to charities whose work ostensibly serves the interests of the class “as nearly as possible.”

Although laudable in theory, cy pres distributions raise a host of problems in practice. They often stray far from the “next best use,” sometimes benefitting the defendant more than the …


Roadblocks To Access To Justice: Reforming Ethical Rules To Meet The Special Needs Of Low-Income Clients, Louis S. Rulli Jan 2014

Roadblocks To Access To Justice: Reforming Ethical Rules To Meet The Special Needs Of Low-Income Clients, Louis S. Rulli

All Faculty Scholarship

The nation’s growing justice gap has left the poor with far too little access to legal representation, even in the most serious of civil matters. With poverty rates approaching their highest levels in the last fifty years, the poor struggle to hold on to their homes, their jobs, and their families, frequently overmatched by superior resources and an abundance of opposing lawyers representing corporations, government, and well-heeled interests. Non-profit lawyers struggle to provide limited assistance to the poor in high volume, community settings, or in courtroom corridors and on telephone hot lines. It is in these non-traditional settings that lawyers …