We all were there with the same objective: to achieve increased access, trust, and confidence in the courts though significant reduction in costs and delay in civil cases. We explored various efforts currently underway in state and federal courts: pilot projects, rules amendments, expedited trials, and changes in case management. We drew from these projects the requirements essential to civil justice reform. And we agreed on a protocol to spread the word and implement the message.

IAALS was very sad to learn that U.S. District Judge Mark R. Kravitz passed away on Sunday, September 30, after battling Lou Gehrig's disease for over a year. Judge Kravitz leaves a legacy of commitment to the civil justice system and service to the court and public.

Dan Ritchie, IAALS board member and founder and former University of Denver chancellor, is often credited with bringing DU to the national stage of academia. And, as noted by the Denver Post, he can be credited further as laying the foundation for the university to host the first 2012 presidential debate.

NPR recently interviewed IAALS Executive Director Rebecca Love Kourlis about the impact anti-retention campaigns - such as the one launched against Iowa Justice David Wiggins - has on the judiciary. Kourlis said efforts by groups to oust judges solely for disagreeable decisions have opened up a whole new debate over how states select judges.

A group known as the Oklahoma Civil Justice Council released ratings of supreme court justices based on how they have ruled in civil liability cases. Four justices are standing for retention in November.

An analysis of voting in a supreme court primary election suggests “deep racial polarization.” In the race between incumbent justice Steve Gonzalez and a challenger who neither raised money nor campaigned, the challenger won 30 of 39 counties and nearly 40 percent of the statewide vote.

The conservative advocacy group Americans for Prosperity launched a campaign to highlight the records of the three justices standing for retention in November. The campaign includes television ads criticizing a supreme court ruling that kept an Affordable Care Act-related measure off the 2010 ballot.

The executive board of the state Republican Party voted to oppose the retention of three supreme court justices in November.

Iowans for Freedom announced plans for a statewide “NO Wiggins” bus tour that will oppose judicial activism and the retention of one of the seven justices who in 2009 recognized a right to same-sex marriage in the state’s constitution. The state bar is launching its own weeklong bus tour—the “Yes Iowa Justice Tour.”

Though the state’s judicial elections are nonpartisan in the sense that party affiliation does not appear on the ballot, the state Democratic Party endorsed a state representative who is challenging the sitting chief justice.

A Philadelphia-based Tea Party group vowed to challenge the retention of two supreme court justices on the ballot in 2013 if the state’s voter ID law is not in place for the November elections.

Prior to a campaign recess, the U.S. Senate confirmed two of the 17 pending nominees for federal district court vacancies. Fourteen of the 17 nominees received unanimous approval from the senate judiciary committee.