National Association for Presiding Judges and Court Executive Officers

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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Effective Leaders Articulate Values — and Live by Them

Individuals are often unsure about what constitutes a “value.” When asked to delve deep into personal moral codes and what it means to hold certain standards and ideals, people struggle to clearly convey what they believe and how their actions reﬂect these beliefs. In truth, we have found that people don’t spend much time thinking about what they stand for unless they face a crisis — by which point, they are unprepared to properly evaluate the possible trade-offs among competing values or the long-term consequences of decisions.

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Artiﬁcial Intelligence: A path to shorter workdays or the demise ofhuman viewpoint?

This article is a recounting of a panel discussion entitled “Why BOTher Writing” that took place on November 23, 2023, at an educational gathering at the Appellate Judges Education Institute Summit in Washington DC. The panelists included appellate lawyer Mark Davies, Washington and Lee University School of Law Professor Joshua Fairﬁeld, Thomson Reuters Senior Vice President for Product Development Emily Colbert, and Judge Herbert B. Dixon, Jr., (ret.), Superior Court, District of Columbia. The interchange largely focused on “ChatGPT,” an A.I. program with the ability to respond in full text to a question posed by a user.

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ABA President Mary Smith Letter in Support of Judicial and Court Security

Our courts and judges are under attack. Serious threats against federal judges have doubled since 2021, with 457 serious threats targeting federal judges across the country in 2023. National leaders and private citizens are making false statements and scurrilous accusations against judges for partisan, personal gain. These attacks are no idle matter. Often, they involve threats of physical harm or death — not only to the judges but also to their families and staff.

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