Join NAPCO in Bellevue, Washington August 17-20, 2025
Read more →NAPCO membership is open to presiding, chief and leadership judges, court executives and others …
Read more →The elimination, in various venues, of the in-person courtroom experience is stunting the professional growth of new lawyers and new judges alike. We call for the establishment of hybrid hearings, which provide lawyers the option of virtual/in-person courtroom appearances for all hearings and non-jury trials. Jury trials should be exclusively in person for the lawyers.
Delays in court hearings have become a significant problem at the state, county and municipal levels, according to the report. Among respondents who participate in hearings on a weekly basis, 79% reported that delays of more than 15 minutes have affected their hearing process.
In a new report published Wednesday, the ABA Criminal Justice Section’s Plea Bargain Task
Force provides 14 principles that outline how plea bargaining should operate within the larger criminal justice system. These principles are based on testimony from criminal justice experts and people impacted by plea bargaining, as well as scholarly and legal reports on the process, state and federal rules of criminal procedure, and other materials.
Last year, Judge John J. Russo received an invitation from King Saud University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to teach a course in basic criminology. In narrowing the topic to an issue that would be helpful to the Saudis, given the differences in U.S. and Saudi justice systems, he settled on a program focused on financial crime. He turned to the Egmont Group, which facilitates and prompts the exchange of information, knowledge, and cooperation amongst member financial intelligence units worldwide. With their help, he was able to structure a course.
What is it that we found that really contributes to well-being? There were two big items over 85 years: one is taking care of our health. The part that surprised us was that the people who were happiest, who stayed healthiest as they grew old, and who lived the longest were the people who had the warmest connections with other people. In fact, good relationships were the strongest predictor of who was going to be happy and healthy as they grew old.
Organizations’ hiring plans suggest that the economy remains robust for now. Total labor supply (people who have or are seeking jobs) is roughly back to pre-pandemic levels. By contrast, labor demand (filled plus open jobs) has increased by 3M positions. The excess demand represents about 3% of all those employed, which has contributed to big nominal wage gains. Slower GDP growth—whether a recession or not—will help restore balance.
Casting blame is natural: it is tempting to fault someone else for a snafu rather than taking responsibility yourself. But blame is also corrosive. Pointing fingers saps team cohesion. It makes it less likely that people will own up to mistakes, and thus less likely that organizations can learn from them. Research published in 2015 suggests that a shaggy culture (“It wasn’t me”) shows up in organization performance. Organizations whose managers pointed to external factors to explain their failings underperformed organizations that blamed themselves.
