For decades, ABA Day has brought together legal professionals from across the country to advocate for critical issues affecting the legal profession and access to justice. In 2025, we are expanding this tradition to ensure that every lawyer—whether in Washington, online, or at home—can play an active role in shaping the future of the law.

This year, ABA Day 2025 will include three components:

ABA Day in Washington (April 8–10): The traditional cornerstone of our advocacy efforts, where ABA members meet face-to-face with lawmakers on Capitol Hill to discuss key legislative issues.

ABA Day Online (April 9): A live-streamed, interactive event featuring policy discussions, training sessions, and real-time advocacy opportunities, allowing participants from across the country to engage with Congress digitally.

ABA Day at Home (April 11–27): An in-district advocacy effort empowering ABA members to meet with their elected officials in their home districts, ensuring that our voices are heard at the local level.

As technology continues to shape the legal profession, it’s also transforming how we advocate. While the tradition of in-person meetings on Capitol Hill remains essential and continues to be the most effective way to move the needle on issues in Congress, we recognize that not every lawyer can travel to Washington, D.C. That’s why we are making ABA Day Online and ABA Day at Home a central part of our 2025 efforts. Click here to register today.

ABA Day Online: Advocacy at your fingertips

For those unable to attend in person, ABA Day Online provides a powerful opportunity to participate. This two-hour live broadcast on April 9 will feature:

• Messages from key members of Congress leading legislative efforts on our advocacy issues.

• Keynote speakers and panels on major legislative issues impacting the legal profession.

• Live training sessions to help advocates learn how to effectively engage with their representatives.

• Real-time advocacy opportunities using ABA’s digital tools to contact Congress instantly.

• Breakout sessions hosted by ABA Sections, Divisions, and Forums, providing targeted advocacy discussions on critical legal topics.

With the ability to watch from anywhere, participants can take immediate action while engaging with fellow advocates nationwide.

ABA Day At Home: Bringing advocacy to your community

Following ABA Day in Washington, we’re taking advocacy directly to lawmakers’ home districts. From April 11–27, ABA members are encouraged to meet with their representatives and senators in their local offices. These meetings will mirror those held in Washington but will focus on building long-term relationships with congressional staff and officials.

To assist with in-district meetings, ABA will provide:

• One-pagers and talking points on key advocacy issues.

• Guidance on scheduling and conducting meetings with congressional offices.

• Opportunities to invite lawmakers to visit legal aid organizations and pro bono clinics.

Why your participation matters

The legal profession plays a unique role in protecting democracy and ensuring equal access to justice. Through ABA Day 2025, we have an opportunity to unite as one voice—whether in-person, online, or at home—to advocate for policies that strengthen the profession and benefit the public.

This year’s key issues include:

• Access to legal services and disaster aid funding for LSC

• Judicial security and the JUDGES Act

• Tax fairness for law firms and professional service businesses

• Defending Public Service Loan Forgiveness

By participating in ABA Day 2025, you are making an impact, regardless of where you are.

How can you get involved?

• Register for ABA Day to participate and learn more.

• Plan an in-district meeting with your lawmakers between April 11–27.

• Spread the word—encourage your colleagues to get involved and share ABA Day resources on social media.

Join us and make your voice heard. Advocacy is stronger when we stand together.

To learn more and register, visit ambar.org/ABADay today.

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This column is written by the ABA Governmental Affairs Office and discusses advocacy efforts by the ABA relating to issues being addressed by Congress and the executive branch of the U.S. government.

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Judiciary

Federal judge acknowledges his civics presentations to politically affiliated club violated ethics code

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 7, 2025, 8:47 am CST

The judicial council of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Denver has tossed an ethics complaint against a federal judge who took corrective action after he was accused of giving presentations to a politically affiliated group.

The unnamed federal judge acknowledged that his civics-related presentations to the group violated the ban on making speeches to a political organization in the judicial conduct code, according to a June decision published last month by 10th Circuit Chief Judge Jerome A. Holmes.

The judge “voluntarily acknowledged his mistake, ensured the removal of his presentations from the club’s YouTube channel, and notified the club that he would not present at future club meetings,” Holmes wrote.

Reuters and Colorado Politics have coverage.

The judge said he made the presentations because he wanted to represent the federal judiciary and the role that law plays in society. Political activity was not the “sole, or really even the predominate, focus” of the club, the judge had stated.

The ethics complaint had been filed by a pro se litigant who said the judge demonstrated his lack of partiality by his educational presentations to the club. The litigant also claimed that the judge made inappropriate comments during the presentations and discriminated against the litigant while presiding in his civil matter.

Those claims “are dismissed because they are completely unsupported,” Holmes said.

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3. Americans’ confidence in courts hits all-time…

Judiciary

Americans’ confidence in courts hits all-time low; did Trump cases have bipartisan impact?

By Debra Cassens Weiss

December 18, 2024, 10:25 am CST

Americans’ confidence in the courts hit an all-time low of 35% in 2024, a decrease of 24 percentage points in four years, according to a Gallup poll released Tuesday.

Confidence declined among those who disapproved of President Joe Biden’s leadership, as well as among those who approved, according to an online Gallup summary. The poll did not ask about political party.

The Associated Press covered the findings.

“The results come after a tumultuous period that included the overturning of the nationwide right to abortion, the indictment of former President Donald Trump and the subsequent withdrawal of federal charges, and his attacks on the integrity of the judicial system,” the article says.

The only indictment that led to a conviction had alleged that Trump falsified business records to pay hush money to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in a bid to bolster his election in 2016.

Confidence in courts among those disapproving of Biden’s leadership declined from 46% in 2021 to 29% in 2024. Among those who approved of Biden’s leadership, confidence remained steady at 62% between 2021 and 2023, before decreasing to 44% this year.

The legal cases against Trump likely affected the confidence of both sets of respondents, Gallup said. Those who dislike Biden may have been dissatisfied with the cases against Trump. Those who like Biden many have been dissatisfied with court decisions favoring Trump.

Only nine nations had greater decreases in confidence in the courts over the same four-year period, the New York Times points out. They were Myanmar, Venezuela, Croatia, South Africa, Syria, Hong Kong, Morocco, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uzbekistan.

Lydia Saad, the director of U.S. social research at Gallup, told the New York Times that the results represent “a striking decline” in the global context.

“These drops are typically associated with pretty significant political upheavals,” Saad said.

A separate Gallup poll asked about Americans’ trust in the federal judicial branch headed by the U.S. Supreme Court. Forty-eight percent said they had a great deal or a fair amount of confidence, according to findings released in October.

But political party made a difference. Among Republicans, 71% had a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the federal judicial branch headed by the Supreme Court. Among Democrats, only 24% had such confidence.

Gallup also asked whether respondents approved or disapproved of the job being done by the Supreme Court. Overall, 44% of Americans approved of the Supreme Court. Seventy-two percent of Republicans approved, while 15% of Democrats approved.

The Supreme Court ruled in July in Trump v. United States that presidents have absolute immunity when exercising core constitutional powers and at least presumptive immunity for acts “within the outer perimeter” of their official responsibilities.

The Supreme Court’s decision holding that there is no constitutional right to abortion, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, was released in June 2022. The next month, Democratic approval of the court decreased to 13%.

“When we ask Republicans about the Supreme Court, they’re still very positive,” Saad told the New York Times. “When you don’t pin them down on the Supreme Court and talk about the courts, they’re saying the courts are misbehaving and engaging in quote-unquote lawfare.”

My hometown Toulon, Illinois, is a small farm community of 1,200 souls about three hours southwest of the Chicago sprawl. During my youth, it featured five gas stations; four churches; three grocery stores and two doctors, which said something about gas, God and medicine in my 1960s rural America.

We also had one community library, and that made a great difference. There were two lawyers in town too and one courthouse on Main Street guarded by a genuine Civil War cannon in addition to our Toulon Public Library. The cannon is fired one time each year to start the Old Settlers Day parade, and in 2019, it even blasted the ashes of a beloved neighbor, Shirley, down Main Street and into eternity, just as she had wished.

I admired the lawyers and was determined to be one someday, but it was our library that first altered my life. I was born with an oft-misunderstood blood-clotting disorder called hemophilia. Its propensity to cause internal bleeding is life threatening, and it commonly damages joints, especially when not treated. There was no treatment in those old days, and there still is no cure. But long ago, my dad found something remarkable at our public library: hope.

Ours was an original Carnegie library, a local treasure built by the prescient steel magnate in 1914. My father discovered it in 1960 when I was 8 years old, and he was a factory worker at our local Kraft cheese plant.

He had missed out on college but loved reading. He found solace at that library, devouring books that featured Tom Sawyer, Scarlett O’Hara, history and world geography. He took many distant journeys through the writings of Emerson, Kipling, Churchill and Barbara Tuchman—one of his favorites. He was especially impressed by Tuchman’s take on the “shot heard round the world” beginning to Emerson’s Concord Hymn, which she called the best four lines in American literature. I memorized them years ago, just because.

Our Carnegie was a dignified brick edifice built for $6,000. It was an oasis for knowledge, not some bogus den of “literary filth” that today’s short-sighted cynics might pretend. I grew up two blocks north of that library in a two-bedroom house with one magical front porch swing. My dad often occupied that swing—always with a book.

The basic library was one giant room introduced by the massive desk of our town librarian and holistic health nut, Ella. It had a nostalgic aroma of wood and books, and every sound of footsteps or scooting chairs echoed off its high ceilings. Somehow the whole place managed to be quiet and loud at the same time.

Decades later I too found comfort not only in reading books but in writing them—largely inspired by my father and our library maven Ella. After many failed attempts, my first book was eventually published in 1997. It was researched almost entirely at the public library in Highland Park, Illinois, a congenial Chicago suburb that recently suffered through a widely reported 2022 Independence Day mass shooting.

There were virtually no public libraries in America before steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie built 1,689 of them from 1889 to 1923, many in rural communities. Carnegie, the wealthy industrialist immigrant known for U.S. Steel, Carnegie Mellon University and Carnegie Hall, had envisioned public libraries as an accessible portal to knowledge and distant places long before the internet.

Americans visit libraries more than we attend the movies, yet libraries have become recent targets for culture war politics. Nonetheless, most of us go because modern libraries are dynamic centers for learning, discourse and access to research and the internet. My own Carnegie library, planted in a vast sea of Midwestern corn surrounding the plaintive Spoon River, probably saved my life.

As a little boy with what doctors call hemophilia B, I had many bouts with unchecked swellings in my knees and other joints that kept me awake for days, suffering and often screaming into my pillow each night.

When my health deteriorated, my father consulted Ella, our local librarian and health nut, then he consumed every library book on health and nutrition that he could find. He decided to experiment on me with fresh vegetables, food supplements and vitamins. It did not cure me, but my healthier body began to recover a little faster and better. That likely saved me until new clotting factor treatments changed my life in 1972 when I was 20 years old.

Through a patchwork of loans, scholarships and luck, I made it through college at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. A mishap there once landed me in the local hospital, where I discovered a real hematologist for the first time.

Armed with medical science and renewed hope, I tackled law school at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Chicago-Kent College of Law, where I encountered still more libraries. One of them was called “the morgue.” It was located at my weekend part-time job: the Chicago Tribune newsroom. I was hired to run copy among the reporters and editors, a dream position. The quiet morgue was where the Trib stored thousands of clipped articles organized by topic and folded into wooden card catalog-style drawers.

After an economic downturn in the 1970s, much rural manufacturing left downstate Illinois. In 1985, my parents made the quantum leap from country living to Chicago, where I had settled in as a young lawyer.

My dad found work in the internal library of a large law firm (Schiff Hardin) with hundreds of lawyers in the monstrous Sears Tower, where he flourished and was revered by his boss and co-workers. At age 53, my mother courageously became a bank teller across the street, her first outside job. They took the bus to work together, being sure to arrive on “Toulon time,” which meant an hour early, just in case.

I married a suburban Chicago girl, who later worked as a librarian and teacher at our local middle school. She also ran the summer school program and joined our community library board—twice—all in the suburban town where our two children would grow up.

She stresses that modern libraries are not just about books. They are information centers and offer access to the internet for those who need it. After all, public libraries are one of the few places where users don’t have to pay anything or buy something.

Libraries are “uber-local,” a pulse of the community. They are a curator of resources, not some evil distributor of propaganda. Their books are carefully chosen for their worth, content, diverse viewpoints and community interests, not to indoctrinate or manipulate. Those books should be celebrated, debated or criticized but not banned.

My transplanted mom and dad eventually retired, and they died several years later. Toulon’s old Carnegie building still stands. But now, it houses part of the Stark County Historical Society.

The actual library moved to a newly built modern facility near the town’s health center. It offers books, computers, access to the internet and portals to far-away places. Its inviting fireplace and reading lounge are named for my parents: John and Dolores Ham. They are buried not far away.

I have now practiced law in Chicago for nearly 50 years. Once, when I stood at the Piraeus, the historic port of nearby Athens described by Plato and Socrates, I realized that my father, of all people, had already been there. Of course, he had. Thanks to the endless journeys that he had taken from Toulon’s Carnegie library.

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Eldon L. Ham is a member of the faculty at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Chicago-Kent College of Law, where he has taught since 1994. He is also the designated legal analyst for sports radio station WSCR in Chicago and is the author of five books on topics of sports history. For more information, visit his website at EldonHam.com.

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This column reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily the views of the ABA Journal—or the American Bar Association.