Ethics

In his 2023 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. focused on the new technology while steering clear of Supreme Court ethics.

After Florida Governor Ron DeSantis suspended elected state attorney Andrew Warren in August 2022 because he vowed not to enforce abortion restrictions and replaced him with a political ally, Warren sued, alleging First Amendment retaliation. District court: Some of the factors that motivated DeSantis to suspend Warren definitely involved the prosecutors’ First Amendment rights but DeSantis would have canned Warren regardless. Eleventh Circuit: Sigh.

North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls has dropped her First Amendment lawsuit because the judicial panel scrutinizing her public comments about the courts, colleagues and race has dismissed a complaint against her (view full article).

Congress has passed another stopgap funding bill to fund the government through early March (view full article).

With some federal agencies, including those that oversee agriculture, transportation and veterans' services, set to run out of funding Friday night at midnight and a winter storm toward the nation's capitol, lawmakers were under pressure to finish their work and leave town.

Judge Charles Wilson of the U.S Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit will take senior status upon confirmation of his successor, but no earlier than Dec. 31 (view full article).

Judge Wilson, nominated by President Bill Clinton, has been on the Atlanta-based court since 1999. Prior to that, he was a U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Florida and magistrate judge for the district.

Civil rights lawyer Nancy Abudu has been confirmed to the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, where she will be the first Black woman to sit on the Atlanta-based court (view Senate press release).

The Second Circuit referred a New York attorney for punishment Tuesday for submitting a brief citing a fake case generated by ChatGPT and not checking over the brief to catch the mistake (view full article)

The lawyer was referred to the Second Circuit's grievance panel.

Constance Baker Motley was the first Black woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court, and in 1966, became the first to serve as a federal judge.

Motley graduated from Columbia Law School in 1946. While studying law, she went to work for the NAACP’s legal staff, joining Robert L. Carter, who later served with Motley as a federal judge.  The boss who hired Motley as NAACP’s first female attorney: future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

In highly unusual en banc news, the Tenth Circuit has decided following panel argument that, rather than issue a panel opinion, it will sit en banc to decide in the first instance whether a pretrial detainee's Sixth Amendment rights were violated when the United States Attorney's Office obtained a recording of a phone conversation with his attorney.

Charlotte E. Ray (born January 13, 1850 - January 4, 1911) became the first African-American woman to graduate from a law school, and the first to formally practice law in the United States in 1872.

In the 19th century, most women – and particularly women of color – were barred from the legal profession. They were forbidden from enrolling in law schools and from obtaining licenses to practice law across the United States. The legal profession was largely controlled by, and reserved for, wealthy white men.