Hawaii Supreme Court Judge Sabrina McKenna to receive Stonewall Award Share:
CHICAGO, Feb. 4, 2021 â The American Bar Association Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity will honor Judge Sabrina McKenna with its Stonewall Award during a virtual ceremony on Feb. 20 at 5:30 p.m. CST at the ABA Midyear Meeting.
Named after the New York City Stonewall Inn police raid and riot of June 28, 1969, which was a turning point in the gay rights movement, the award recognizes lawyers who have considerably advanced lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals in the legal profession and successfully championed LGBT legal causes.
McKenna is the first openly LGBTQ judge to sit on the Hawaii Supreme Court, where she has served since 2011.
The 19th Amendment and its legacy: Fights remain for voting inclusivity
Image from Shutterstock.com.
During and after the 2020 election, countless news articles were devoted to the voting impact of women: suburban women, Black women, white women, older women, younger women, college-educated women, high school-educated women and just about every other category in which they could be sliced, diced and otherwise grouped.
And indeed, women did have an outsized effect on the election. Black women helped propel Democrat Joseph R. Biden into the presidency, with about 90% backing the former vice president on his way to reaching an historic high of 81.3 million votes. Majorities of Latina voters and suburban white women with college degrees also backed Biden.
Webinar addresses vacating the records of human trafficking victims January 13, 2021
Share This A proposed bill that would expunge criminal convictions for Connecticut’s trafficking victims was the focus of the Quinnipiac School of Law’s January 8 webinar, “Fighting Human Trafficking by Decriminalizing Victims: Expanding Connecticut’s Vacatur Laws.”
The webinar, part of an ongoing series to raise awareness of human trafficking, was planned by the law school’s Human Trafficking Prevention Project. Nearly 250 viewers listened as a diverse group of lawyers and experts weighed in on the bill, which was drafted by the school’s Civil Justice Clinic and HTPP.
New ABA study explains why jury trials are disappearing
December 28, 2020 Share:
As jury trials disappear from American courtrooms, independent of the pandemic, lawyers, judges and legislators should consider changing four factors that are suppressing such trials: civil damage caps, mandatory arbitration, criminal sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimum sentences.
According to a new report from the ABA Commission on the American Jury, “the jury trial is an exceptional rather than a commonplace outcome.”
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That’s the conclusion of a four-year study released by the American Bar Association Commission on the American Jury.
The study is based on a survey of 1,460 lawyers and judges from 2016 to 2019, and results were published in the Louisiana Law Review at Louisiana State University. The article was co-authored by Shari Seidman Diamond of Northwestern University and Jessica M. Salerno of Arizona State University.