Iaals Publications

Public trust and confidence in our judiciary, and our judges, is vital. Yet, over the last several decades, that trust has been eroded. For people to trust judges again, we must ensure a series of pillars are in place: improved ways of selecting judges; improved ways of evaluating judges’ performance; and improved systems for disciplining judges who abuse their power—which is the subject of a new IAALS report.

Much has been done over the past five years to address the cost and delay in the civil justice process, and much of that work has focused on discovery. Recognizing that there are equal challenges and opportunities for improvement in the area of motions practice, IAALS has focused on understanding the current motions landscape and issuing recommendations for improvement. In this effort, IAALS has released a new report intended to spark a national conversation about the current challenges of summary judgment.

We are proud to present you with IAALS' 2017 Annual Report, showcasing our efforts to help create a legal system that works for everyone. The theme this year is “Action to Justice.” Throughout the report, you will see images that are straight out of the comics. But despite the whimsical tone, the real message is that we live in times that pose great challenges to our system of justice, and superheroes must answer the call to act.

Questions about when judges should recuse themselves from hearing cases—usually because a party perceives their ability to be impartial to be in doubt—have drawn renewed attention recently due to high-profile cases and closely divided U.S. Supreme Court decisions. For example, the high court ruled last year in Williams v. Pennsylvania that a defendant was denied a fair hearing in a capital case when the state’s chief justice did not recuse himself, because decades earlier the justice had prosecuted the case as then district attorney.

I am so proud to present to you our 2016 Annual Report, capturing a remarkable year in our existence and representing the work of our truly visionary staff. Last year we celebrated our tenth-year anniversary. As we embark upon the next ten, in this report we embrace the theme: The Stage is Set: Lights, Camera, Innovation. Throughout the report, you will find not only evidence of what we have accomplished, but also the ways in which we are setting the stage for continuing and fundamental change. You will also find quotes from Nobel Prize-winning bards, Tony Award-winning lyricists, and favorite authors—that inspire the creative in each of us. 

Robust evaluation of judges has a dual purpose. It educates judges on their strengths and weaknesses on the bench and equips them to make necessary improvements. It also empowers voters, legislators, and governors with meaningful information they can use when deciding whether to retain or reappoint judges. Across the country, people are struggling with how to gauge whether a judge is doing a good job.

The January 2017 edition of Family Court Review is dedicated to the Honoring Families Initiative’s Family Bar Summit: Shaping the System for the Families We Serve. The Summit, held in November 2015, brought together national thought leaders from diverse professional organizations to identify obstacles to serving children and families in separation and divorce matters and explore opportunities for meaningful change.

At IAALS’ Fourth Civil Justice Reform Summit, we brought together stakeholders to brainstorm a vision for the courts of tomorrow and steps to get there. Today we release the report from that summit, Creating the Just, Speedy, and Inexpensive Courts of Tomorrow: Ideas for Impact from IAALS’ Fourth Civil Justice Reform Summit.

A just-released report recommending concrete improvements in the American civil justice system has been endorsed by the Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ), the country’s association of top state judicial leaders. The report—released last week at CCJ’s annual conference in Jackson, Wyoming—calls on state judicial leaders to implement 13 recommendations.

Today, aspiring lawyers across the country will sit for a bar examination that is intended to test their preparation for practice and will determine whether they will join the ranks of the legal profession this fall. While the bar examination has long been the measurement of what law graduates need in order to enter the profession, the profession and legal employers have nonetheless questioned its efficacy and the efficacy of legal education as a whole in actually preparing new lawyers. Many believe that American law schools are graduating lawyers unprepared to meet the demands of modern practice. Yet knowing what new lawyers need to succeed, and how they can acquire it effectively, was elusive until now.