NAPCO membership is open to presiding, chief and leadership judges, court executives and others …
Read more →Save the Date! NAPCO Conference • Wilmington, Delaware • August 16-19, 2026
Read more →On July 24th Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed the first in a series of laws aimed at drastically limiting the powers of the country’s Supreme Court. Members of the opposition walked out in protest at the final reading of the law, which passed 64-0 in the 120-strong chamber.
We all know the original architecture of jury trials had its flaws. But thanks to jury trial caretakers, trial customs and practices inherited from the British have evolved, especially recently, to meet modern circumstances. This progression of reforms stems from litigation doctrines, empirical studies from the legal academy and social sciences, courageous members of bench and bar who undertake innovative pilot projects, and policymakers who introduce and enact enlightened proposals.
A lack of judges, and, in many states, a shortage of other staff needed to keep courts going, are clogging the system. Tim McGoughran, head of New Jersey’s bar association, says that pre-pandemic, most divorce cases going to trial did so within a year. Now some are entering their third or fourth year. For the past three years, the court system has operated with an average of more than 60 judicial vacancies.
I’ve yet to find a judge or anyone else who disagrees with my opinion that our country is more divided now than at any time since the Civil War. Disagreement is to be expected in a democracy. The problem is how we disagree. Simple disputes turn into screaming matches. Protests turn into violence. We no longer see someone with a different perspective—we see some thing that must be shouted down and defeated. It was an 18th-century English aristocrat, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who said, “Civility costs nothing and buys everything.” But that accounting seems lost on modern society.
The Innovation for Justice program, also known as I4J, announced a new Housing Stability Legal Advocate (HSLA) initiative on May 30 to train and empower licensed advocates who are employed by or volunteer at community-based organizations to provide limited-scope legal advice and services to tenants who are facing eviction. In most states, only lawyers can provide these types of legal services, due to restrictions on the unauthorized practice of law.
On June 15, 2023, NAPCO held a webinar titled “Mental Health Cases II: Crisis and Opportunity for State and Local Courts”. This webinar is the second in a three-part series exploring the problems, challenges, and strategies trial court leaders need to know to improve the justice system’s response to cases involving mental health disorders.
Over the years, many have wondered why legal writing is so tangled and complicated. Though some judges are sophisticated stylists, most legal language is a maze of over-intricate phrases far from easy or pithy to grasp. But do lawyers write that way to impress, to bewilder—or perhaps because they must?
