Approved by the ABA House of Delegates
Sept. 2010
At the 2010 Annual Meeting in San Francisco, the House of Delegates approved resolutions that the Criminal Justice Section initiated or co-sponsored regarding the following issues (click on the relevant REPORT # to view the full text of the resolution and the background report):
In September 2009, the Executive Committee of the ABA Board of Governors (“BOG”) approved the formation of a joint Task Force of the ABA Standing Committee on Judicial Independence (“SCJI”) and the National Center of State Courts (“NCSC”) to follow up on recommendations made at the May 2009 ABA Summit Conference, “Justice is the Business of Government,” in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Justice is the Business of Government (“JBiz”) Task Force is co-chaired by Mary C. McQueen, President of the NCSC; H. Thomas Wells, Jr., ABA President (2008-2009), and Edward W. Madeira, Jr., SCJI Special Advisor. Jack L. Brown, immediate past Chair of the ABA Judicial Division (“JD”), chairs the JBiz subcommittee on principles and standards relating to state court funding.
JBiz members additionally include: David Adkins, Executive Director, Council of State Governments; Hon. Louraine C. Arkfeld, Presiding Judge (retired), Tempe Municipal Court (1994-2010); Hon. Russell Carparelli, Colorado Court of Appeals; Hon. Ernestine S. Gray, Orleans Parish Juvenile Court; Steven C. Hollon, Administrative Director, Supreme Court of Ohio and past President, Conference of State Court Administrators (2009-2010); Hon. David A. Horowitz, Chair, ABA JD Lawyers Conference; Donald Murray, Senior Legislative Director, Justice and Public Safety at National Association of Counties; David Quam, Director, Office of Federal Relations at National Governors Association; William T. “Bill” Robinson III, President-Elect, American Bar Association; William K. Weisenberg, Assistant Executive Director for Public Affairs and Government Relations, Ohio State Bar Association and Chair, SCJI; and Robert N. Baldwin, Executive Vice President and General Counsel, NCSC.
The focus of JBiz is to address and advance the cause of adequate funding for our state courts. Towards that end, the NCSC acts as the staffing component of the Conference of Chief Justices (“CCJ”), recognizing that the courts must plan “to do more with less.” The NCSC, working to establish the value of courts in the administration of justice, has engaged in a “re-engineering” project implicating case administration, court governance, the functions of state courts, and principles for funding…
In his August 31, 2010 New York Law Journal article, Court Rule Altered to Buttress E-Discovery; I-Filing Advances, Joel Stashenko discusses the amended Uniform Rules of Trial Courts of the State of New York as an effort to insure that lawyers keep “up to speed” regarding their clients’ records at the early stages of discovery. The amended rules were published August 18 and went into effect immediately, having been approved beforehand by Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman and the presiding justices of the four appellate division departments.
Much of this activity has been influenced by a New York court system report, Electronic Discovery in the State of New York, published in February 2010. The key recommendations of that Report includes: establishing an e-discovery work group; improving the preliminary conference; more e-discovery programs in Education and Training; more court attorney referees serving as e-discovery specialists, establishing an institutional presence at the Sedona Conference; and working harder to improve the quality of E-Discovery practice.
On the second front mentioned in Mr. Stashenko’s article, electronic filing of litigant papers is said to be proceeding in New York at a deliberative pace. While more than10,000 lawyers registered for New York’s electronic filing system in 2009, compared to only 300 in 2002, there is , as Chief Administrative Judge Ann Pfau has observed, “there is a long way to go: before e-filing and E-Discovery are required in all New York Courts. After 11 years of experimentation with electronic filing, New York has accorded permanent status to the effort and is now beginning to institute mandatory e-filing in limited areas.
Today we received a link to a slide presentation by Glenn Patton, Director of Wordcat Quality Management at OCLC on July 11 at the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado. We are sharing this information with you because these slides convey an important message regarding the urgency of establishing acceptable standards and developing techniques based on those standards for ensuring continued and improved access to structured data stored in various formats on web.2.0 and future versions as they evolve. .Topics covered include updates regarding the Connexion client, some discussion of the Virtual Internation Authority File (VIAF), and the ISO 27729 ISO Standard, International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI).
This is indeed the season for presenting awards. The ABA Silver Gavel Awards honor those in media and the arts that foster a better understanding of the law. All are invited to the Gavel Awards presentation at the National Press Club, Washington, D.C. on July 7 at 5:00 p.m. The event is preceded by a reception and registration is required [http://www.abanet.org/publiced/gavel/presentation.shtml
Here are the event details sent to us by the ABA:
Event Details Wednesday, July 7, 2010 5:00 – 6:30 P.M.
April, 2010
This Report of the Executive Director to the ABA Board of Governors* highlights issues related to ABA Membership, and Personnel, Also highlighted is an extensive list of Programs and Projects including those related to Bioethics and the Law, Center for Professional Responsibity, Criminal Justice, Family Law, Government Affairs, Immigration, Intellectual Property, Law Library of Congress, Mental Health and Disability, Rule of Law Initiative, Science and Technology Law, Substance Abuse, Women in the Profession, and many more. See the entire Report by clicking on the link below:
April 2010 Report of the American Bar Association Executive Director to the ABA Board of Governors
Many of us just learned the sad news that Nylink, which has served New York State Libraries for 37 years, is phasing out its operations and will be closing in one year. We understand that Nylink will be closing its operations primarily due to a steep decline in its revenue stream which has seriously degrated Nylink’s ability to remain fully self supporting and continue delivering an acceptable level of service to its members beyond this period. Throughout the years many of us have come to rely on Nylink for its sustained high level of dedicated, personalized service. Nylink will be missed. We wish the employees a good 12 months and every success in the future
David Badertscher
For additional details see:
May 2010 (Vol. 5)
Excerpt from message of Chair,Charles Hynes:
The ABA Criminal Justice Section is the national entity that brings all the players in the criminal law arena together to address critical issues for the field. The focus of the Section is not only on policy development concerning those critical issues, but also on designing collaborative practical projects that help forge solutions to those systemic problems at the local and national levels. Our work on reentry and on the disparate racial impact of the criminal justice system are but two examples of how the CJS has developed cutting edge policy coupled with consequential project work. We are currently working on a project to address issues raised by the U.S. Supreme Court Padilla decision and have already developed a web resource page to assist attorneys in complying with the decision. Further, former Chair Stephen Saltzburg is forming a Task Force on Padilla which will strengthen resources to support the ability of defense lawyers to comply.
NYLINK reports that on May 30, 2010 OCLC plans to discontinue access to the NetLibrary database on WorldCat.org, WorldCat Local and WorldCat Local “quick start” on May 30. This database of NetLibrary metadata was released in July 2009 to facilitate discovery of NetLibrary eBooks and eAudiobooks through WorldCat.org-based services. Discontinuation of the discrete NetLibrary database is a result of the March 2010 acquisition of NetLibrary by EBSCO Publishing. For more information, please see the NYLINK Status Line blog at http://nylink.org/SL/?p=1325&preview=true.
By Joni L. Cassidy Cassidy Cataloging Services, Inc,
On March 17, 2010, my post about www.theSkyRiver.com and OCLC included the following statement:
“OCLC and Cassidy Cataloguing Services, Inc. may finally reach a compromise. OCLC may grant permission to allow a WorldCat Local institution that has purchased Cassidy MARC record sets to view the records as part of its WorldCat Local subscription.”
Criminal Law Library Blog