A simple reform could solve the prosecutor shortage crisis
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Hillary Blout is the founder and executive director of For The People, a ChangeLawyers Legal Empowerment grantee.
In the 1990s, Phillip Villanueva attempted to rob a local doughnut shop. With this being his “third strike,” he was sentenced to 25 years to life. While in prison for more than two decades, Villanueva dedicated himself to rehabilitation, participating in programs such as substance recovery, conflict resolution, mentorship, and even training service dogs for veterans. To his surprise, in 2018, a law passed that enabled the very same prosecutor’s office that had once sentenced him to prison to instead recommend Villanueva’s release. This was the key to his freedom.
The law, called prosecutor-initiated resentencing, is a form of “second-look” legislation that enables prosecutors to revisit old cases and propose revised sentences to the court. PIR posits that if prosecutors can recommend a sentence on the front end, then it is only just that they be able to look back, years later, and determine whether that sentence is still appropriate.
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Why are law schools outsourcing services to the Federalist Society?
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In 2023, the average cost of attending law school reached $220,335 over three years—$146,484 of which goes to tuition alone. The fancier the school, the higher the sticker price: At Columbia Law School, the current cost of attendance is $118,357 per year, with tuition alone coming in at just under $80,000 annually. At Harvard Law, the annual cost of attendance is $116,00, or $348,000 over the course of a J.D.
Although law school has never been considered cheap, these numbers represent a dramatic increase in recent years. In 2002, tuition at private law schools averaged $24,193 per year; in 2022, just 20 years later, that average had gone up to $54,070.
When students are being charged nearly $50,000 per year to attend law school, it would be reasonable to expect that most of what they need from a professional degree would, in fact, be provided by the school. The reality, however, is that law schools have managed to offload a significant amount of the work of training the next generation of lawyers.
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Conservative federal judges are fighting with each other
Speaking Of...
A federal court is picking an unusual fight with one of the federal judiciary’s governing bodies — one with implications for literally all aspects of US policy.
In March, the Judicial Conference of the United States, one of the federal courts’ internal governing bodies, announced a new policy intended to combat “judge-shopping.” Some federal courts effectively allow plaintiffs to choose their own judges, which has allowed many litigants with dubious or even ridiculous claims to obtain court orders blocking pretty much any federal policy that they find objectionable.
One court that allowed such judge-shopping, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, announced on Friday that it will defy the Judicial Conference and refuse to implement the new policy. This defiance, if allowed to stand, would render the Judicial Conference’s new policy virtually useless, as the Northern District of Texas is the locus of the nation’s worst problem with judge-shopping.
Among other things, the fact that many right-wing plaintiffs can select Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk to hear their lawsuits has turned this obscure Trump appointee to this Texas federal court into one of the most powerful public officials in the country.
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Anti-abortion lawyers are trying to tell doctors like me how to do our jobs
Perspective
Dr. Dara Kass is an emergency medicine physician in New York. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Listening to oral arguments on Tuesday in the Supreme Court’s medication abortion case as an emergency room physician who has seen my share of miscarriage management, it was hard to escape a feeling of rage and disequilibrium. Were these abortion opponents really saying what I thought they were saying about how to handle emergency room patients presenting with miscarriages?
First: Pregnancy-related complaints are a leading cause of visits to emergency departments around the country. On almost every one of my emergency department shifts, I care for a patient who is having vaginal bleeding while pregnant or being evaluated for a possible ectopic pregnancy. Unfortunately, patients who are bleeding and pregnant will often learn in my emergency department that their pregnancy has ended, and we will sit and discuss their options, often in consultation with my obstetrics colleagues.
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