National Association for Presiding Judges and Court Executive Officers

What the latest data says about immigrants in the U.S.

The United States has long had more immigrants than any other country. In fact, the U.S. is home to one-fifth of the world’s international migrants. These immigrants have come from just about every country in the world. Pew Research Center regularly publishes research on U.S. immigrants. Based on this research, here are answers to some key questions about the U.S. immigrant population that NAPCO website editors felt trial court leaders may be interested in knowing.

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Supreme Court’s Trump immunity ruling poses risk for democracy, scholars say

In its immunity decision Monday, the Supreme Court emphasized the long-cherished ideal that no one in America is above the law, not even the president. The court’s dissenters and a chorus of critics said the majority had undercut that notion, elevating the president to a king who can easily avoid prosecution.

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Building Culture From the Middle Out

Middle managers often assume that the best approach for ensuring a strong workplace culture is frequent messaging from top leaders promoting the mission, purpose, vision, ethos, and values of the organization. This assumption allows managers to see C-suite executives or specialists in human resources as primarily responsible for fostering culture. This deference can make sense, because employees typically want and expect top leaders to deﬁne and articulate overarching visions and values. But it leaves leaders lower in the hierarchy thinking that their job is to uphold and endorse the culture as is.

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Most Black Americans Believe U.S. Institutions Were Designed To Hold Black People Back

A new analysis suggests that many Black Americans believe the racial bias in U.S. institutions is not merely a matter of passive negligence; it is the result of intentional design. Specifically, large majorities describe the prison (74%), courts and judicial process (70%), political (67%) and economic (65%) systems in the U.S., among others, as having been designed to hold Black people back, either a great deal or a fair amount.

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Assignment load for public defenders needs to decrease, says data-based survey

The National Public Defense Workload Study calls for a significant reduction in workloads for those who do criminal justice work in the public sector. Mary Fox, director of the Missouri State Public Defender System, explains that she has “attorneys a few years out of law school who are representing between 150 and 200 people at a time.”

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Decoding Leadership: What Really Matters

Telling organization leaders these days that leadership drives performance is a bit like saying that oxygen is necessary to breathe. Over 90 percent of those in business and public enterprises are already planning to increase leadership development because they see it as the single most important human-capital issue their organizations face.

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ABA survey: Most think U.S. democracy is weaker

Democracy in the United States is weaker today than it was five years ago, and most people blame misinformation, disinformation and the political parties, according to a new national survey conducted for the American Bar Association. The 2024 ABA Survey of Civic Literacy asked if democracy today is stronger or weaker than it was five years ago, who is mainly responsible for safeguarding our democracy and whether respondents are concerned about the upcoming November election. It also tested respondents’ knowledge of the U.S. government.

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