Expert Analysis

• 3 Ways To Boost Access To Justice In NYC Small Claims Court

  

  The New York City Small Claims Court is a critical venue for pro se litigants seeking civil justice, but the system is under strain, and three practical reforms are needed to help strengthen fairness, consistency and access, says Charles Montorio-Archer at the New York City Civil Court.

• Crime Victim Aid Should Not Be Tied To Immigration Status

  

  A Trump administration policy conditioning support services for crime victims on immigration status — currently being challenged in court — is unjust and may harm public safety, and it’s simply not necessary to effectively secure the border, say Marc Levin and Khalil Cumberbatch at Council on Criminal Justice.

• How Public Defenders Must Help Fill The Social Services Gap

  

  With public benefit programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program facing severe cuts, public defenders must take steps outside the courtroom to help clients find the physical, social and economic assistance they need to overcome the collateral consequences of incarceration, says Vichal Kumar at Partners for Justice.

• 4 Trauma-Informed Strategies For Mediating Sex Abuse Cases

  

  Navigating the justice system can be a retraumatizing experience for survivors of sexual abuse, so it’s imperative that mediators who work on these types of cases employ trauma-informed methods to foster trust and help parties reach meaningful resolutions, says Ellie Vilendrer at Signature Resolution.

• Homelessness Exec Order Conflates Criminalization With Care

  

  A recent executive order encouraging states to involuntarily commit unhoused people experiencing mental health or substance use issues — combined with a number of slashed social programs — will likely ensnare more people in the criminal legal system, where they’re unlikely to receive adequate treatment, says Regan Huston at the Prison Policy Initiative.

• High Court's Jury Rights Call Is Win For More Than Prisoners

  

  The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Perttu v. Richards — affirming the principle that no one, including incarcerated individuals, should be denied access to a jury via procedural obstacles — is a massive win for vulnerable plaintiffs facing powerful institutions, says Channing Robinson-Holmes at Pitt McGehee.

• 3 Questions To Guide Research On Justice Worker Movement

  

  As legal profession leaders formally encourage courts to study nonlawyer justice worker programs as a tool to address the access to justice crisis, we should begin with asking what we know, what we need to know and how we can know it, say Matthew Burnett and Rebecca Sandefur at Frontline Justice.

• Deepfake Evidence Battles May Exacerbate Justice Inequities

  

  As AI-generated evidence and deepfake claims become more common in litigation, the steep expense of challenging or verifying such evidence threatens to worsen unequal justice system outcomes — and a new cost-allocation framework is needed to preserve fairness, says Rebecca Delfino at Loyola Law School.

• License Plate Readers Need Guardrails, Not Bans

  

  Relying on recent decisions that license plate recognition technology doesn't violate Fourth Amendment privacy rights, legislators should disregard alarmist calls for bans to outlaw the technology and instead focus on implementing responsible guidelines for using this valuable crime-solving tool, says Tim Lee at the Center for Individual Freedom.

• States Can't Ignore Biden Admin Police Misconduct Findings

  

  While the federal government retreats from Biden-era Department of Justice findings of police misconduct, those same findings may have triggered significant legal obligations for state and local prosecutors under the Brady rule, says Matthew Segal at the ACLU.

• Justices' Sentencing Ruling Is More Of A Ripple Than A Wave

  

  The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last week in Esteras v. U.S., limiting the factors that lower courts may consider in imposing prison sentences for supervised release violations, is symbolically important, but its real-world impact will likely be muted for several reasons, say attorneys at Perkins Coie.

• The Reforms Needed To Fight Sexual Abuse By Prison Staff

  

  Prisoners sexually assaulted by corrections staff, such as the California women who recently won a consent decree against FCI Dublin, often delay reporting out of fear of retaliation by their abusers, but several practical reforms could empower prisoners to disclose abuse while the evidence necessary to indict perpetrators is still available, says Jaehyun Oh at Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law.

• Calif. Protests May Fuel A New Wave Of Excessive Force Suits

  

  The protests in Los Angeles this week may spur a new round of excessive force suits against law enforcement, wading into an underdeveloped area of law being shaped by similar cases filed after Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, and generating crucial precedents in a new age of activism, says Scott Brooks at Levy Firestone.

• Shaping Warrantless Arrest Standard Post-Certiorari Denial

  

  Though the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the Gonzalez v. U.S. warrantless arrest case, Justice Sonia Sotomayor's statement regarding the denial suggests that the defense bar should continue pursuing federal court arguments that the Fourth Amendment incorporates an in-the-presence limitation, say attorneys at Sullivan & Cromwell.

• Reading Tea Leaves In High Court's Criminal Law Decisions

  

  The criminal justice decisions the U.S. Supreme Court will announce in the coming weeks will reveal whether last term’s fractured decision-making has continued, an important data point as the justices’ alignment seems to correlate with who benefits from a case’s outcome, says Sharon Fairley at the University of Chicago Law School.