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Layoffs

59 partners leave A&O Shearman outside Asia since decision to trim 10% of equity partnership

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 28, 2025, 3:19 pm CDT

Twenty-five U.S. partners are among the 59 partners who left A&O Shearman since its decision last year to trim 10% of its global equity partnership, according to a count by Law.com.

The count does not include 15 partners who left A&O Shearman in Asia, as previously reported by Law.com. Butit does include partners who left in the United States, London, Europe, Africa and Australia.

A&O Shearman said last year the partner cuts were “a difficult but necessary step forward” following the merger between Allen & Overy and Shearman & Sterling. About 45 partners who left joined other law firms.

A&O Shearman said it currently has around 800 partners worldwide, which is about the same number that it had when it announced the cuts. It is unclear why the current number isn’t lower, according to Law.com.

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3. Attrition rate is ‘markedly higher’ for associates…

Careers

Attrition rate is ‘markedly higher’ for associates of color, NALP Foundation says

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 29, 2025, 9:19 am CDT

The attrition rate for associates in law firms was 20% in 2024, up from 18% in 2023 but still lower than the historic high of 26% in 2021, according to the NALP Foundation for Law Career Research and Education.

The attrition rate was slightly higher for females than males, at 22% and 20% respectively, and was “markedly higher” for associates of color, at 24% compared to 19% for white associates, according to selected findings from the NALP Foundation’s newest annual Update on Associate Attrition, a detailed report on firms’ associate hiring and departures for 2024.

An April 24 press release summarized the findings.

More associates are leaving in a shorter time frame than in the past, according to the data from 119 reporting firms in the United States and Canada. In 2024, 74% of associates left their firms within four years of their hiring, up from a high of 72% in 2023. That is a departure from the five-year historical pattern for departures.

The survey also found an increase in hiring and departures at the surveyed firms. In 2024, 6,092 associates were hired by reporting firms, up from 5,236 in 2023. The number who left—4,125 associates—was also higher than in 2023, when 3,875 associates left firms.

Fifty-five percent of new associates were hired at the entry level, rather than laterally. The difference is even more pronounced in the largest firms of more than 1,000 lawyers, where 61% of associate hires were at the entry level.

Fiona Trevelyan Hornblower, the president and CEO of the NALP Foundation, sees some trends in the findings.

“This new data shows shifts in the talent market are emerging, with the rise in entry level recruiting, as well as earlier departures by associates,” Hornblower said in the press release.

More larger than smaller firms responded to the survey. Only 17% of responding firms had 100 or fewer lawyers. Thirty-seven percent of the firms had more than 500 attorneys.

Law.com covered the results.

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3. Former DOJ lawyer faces disbarment for entanglement…

Ethics

Former DOJ lawyer faces disbarment for entanglement in ‘one of the largest kleptocracy schemes in history’

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 17, 2025, 3:07 pm CDT

A lawyer who worked for the U.S. Department of Justice is facing disbarment after pleading guilty for his role in an illegal foreign influence scheme that allegedly stemmed from his friendship and legal work for hip-hop artist Prakazrel “Pras” Michel.

Lawyer George A. Higginbotham, a former senior congressional affairs specialist at the DOJ, prepared fake loan documents, investment agreements and consulting agreements to hide the source of tens of millions of dollars intended to be used to lobby the U.S. government, according to the April 16 opinion by the Appellate Division’s Second Judicial Department of the New York Supreme Court.

The Legal Profession Blog published highlights.

Higginbotham’s work was intended to facilitate lobbying for the extradition of a political dissident to China and to resolve an investigation of a foreign national who orchestrated a multibillion-dollar embezzlement scheme involving a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund.

Higginbotham was working on behalf of Michel, who wanted help with his dealings with the foreign national, Jho Low, according to Higginbotham’s testimony, as reported by Reuters, at Michel’s trial in April 2023.

Higginbotham entangled himself in a conspiracy to avoid prosecution “in one of the largest kleptocracy schemes in history,” the appeals court said. “Anything less than a disbarment is unwarranted.”

Higginbotham pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to make false statements to a bank in November 2018, according to a press release. He did not influence any aspect of the DOJ investigation involving the investment company known as 1MDB.

Higginbotham was sentenced to probation in November 2023 and ordered to forfeit $70,000, the amount of money that he was paid after submitting invoices for work in the scheme.

Michel was convicted of conspiracy and other charges in April 2023 for using straw donors in the lobbying campaign.

Low was convicted and sentenced in absentia to 10 years in a Kuwaiti prison, the New York Post reported in March 2023.

See also:

Despite lyrics mistake by AI, lawyer wasn’t ineffective for using tech in rapper’s case, federal judge says

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3. Supreme Court appears likely to rule against…

U.S. Supreme Court

Supreme Court appears likely to rule against Mexico in suit against gun-makers for cartel violence

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 5, 2025, 12:46 pm CST

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared likely to side with U.S. gun companies arguing that Mexico cannot sue over the flow of firearms into the country because of a 2005 law providing gun-makers with immunity for third-party crimes committed with their products.

“After a nearly two-hour argument,” the Washington Post reports, “a majority of justices—if not a unanimous court—appeared likely to block the lawsuit from proceeding, with several suggesting Mexico had not shown a close enough connection between guns made in the United States and drug cartel violence.”

Several other publications also reported that the Supreme Court appeared sympathetic to gun company arguments, including Reuters, the New York Times, CNN and SCOTUSblog.

Mexico argues that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act does not shield gun companies because they sell to “red-flag dealers” known for illegally selling to straw purchasers who traffic guns across the border. Mexico’s suit seeks injunctive relief and about $10 billion in damages, according to an ABA Journal case preview.

The suit cites a provision in the law that allows civil liability when businesses knowingly violate a state or a federal law regarding the sale or marketing of firearms or when the the companies aid and abet the violation. The violation must also be the proximate cause of the harm—in this case, drug cartel violence—that is the basis of the suit.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Boston had allowed Mexico to pursue the suit.

Suit defendants Smith & Wesson and Interstate Arms, a gun distributor, asked the Supreme Court to overturn the 1st Circuit’s decision. Initial defendants included seven firearms manufacturers and one wholesaler, but a federal judge dismissed six of them for lack of personal jurisdiction while the cert petition was pending, according to a brief filed by the gun companies.

Noel J. Francisco, a Jones Day partner and a former U.S. solicitor general during President Donald Trump’s first term, argued for the companies.

Mexico “asserts that defendants are liable for every illegal sale by every retailer in America because they know that a small percentage of firearms are sold illegally and don’t do more to stop it,” he said. “If Mexico is right, then every law enforcement organization in America has missed the largest criminal conspiracy in history operating right under their nose, and Budweiser is liable for every accident caused by underage drinkers since it knows that teenagers will buy beer, drive drunk and crash.”

In an exchange with Catherine Stetson, a lawyer for the Mexican government, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the suit does not contend that gun companies violate any U.S. laws.

Instead, the suit allegations “just go to whether or not the defendant had knowledge that at the end of the day, … some dealers might be doing something wrong,” Jackson said.

The case is Smith & Wesson Brands Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos.

The SCOTUSblog case page is here.

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3. This ‘reinvigorated’ doctrine could be used…

Constitutional Law

This ‘reinvigorated’ doctrine could be used to challenge Trump’s tariffs

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 5, 2025, 11:59 am CST

Importers and others who want to challenge tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump could argue that he doesn’t have that power—but the argument isn’t a slam dunk, legal experts say.

Trump has cited the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, a law giving presidents authority to restrict trade in some circumstances, as authority for his power to impose tariffs. At issue is whether the IEEPA gives Trump that power and whether the “major questions doctrine” leads to the conclusion that it does not, Bloomberg Law reports.

Trump has imposed a 10% tariff on imports from China, but he paused threatened tariffs of 25% on goods from Canada and Mexico. Trump said tariffs are needed because of “the grave threat to the United States posed by the influx of illegal aliens and illicit drugs” at the borders, creating a national emergency.

Under the major questions doctrine, Congress must “speak clearly” when authorizing an executive branch agency to make decisions of vast economic and political significance, wrote Ilya Somin, a professor at the George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School, at the Volokh Conspiracy. If a statute is ambiguous, the presumption is that the power was not granted.

The major questions doctrine has been “reinvigorated” by the U.S. Supreme Court in striking down the federal eviction moratorium and vaccine mandates imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bloomberg Law says.

The Supreme Court also cited the doctrine when it ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency didn’t have broad power to regulate climate change and that the Biden administration didn’t have the power to forgive student loans.

Somin argued that imposing “massive tariffs” is “pretty obviously” a decision with vast economic and political significance with high costs to the public. And the statute under which Trump claimed authority is far from clear, as were the statutes in the student loan and eviction moratorium cases, he wrote.

The IEEPA is a “vague statute” that authorizes presidents to restrict trade when there is “any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy or economy of the United States, if the president declares a national emergency with respect to such threat,” Somin wrote.

Peter E. Harrell, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, also sees an argument regarding the major questions doctrine, particularly for “universal baseline” tariffs imposing a specific percentage charge on all imports.

“Courts should find that allowing Trump to waive his magic sharpie to sign an IEEPA executive order imposing tariffs would upset the balance Congress has long sought to strike when it delegates its tariff authority to the president,” he wrote in a Lawfare post.

Apart from the major questions doctrine, an argument could be made that the plain text of the IEEPA doesn’t give presidents tariff authority, Harrell wrote.

Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the authority to set tariffs and regulate commerce with foreign nations. A president’s power to set tariffs comes from delegated authority by Congress, Harrell wrote. The IEEPA gives a president the power to ban or limit exports and imports, but the list “notably” does not explicitly include the power to impose tariffs or taxes.

Saikrishna Prakash, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, told Bloomberg Law that the opposite argument is that the broad powers granted by the law should include the lesser power of imposing tariffs.

The “IEEPA allows a very broad power to ban commerce, and so given that, why can’t the president do something less?” Prakash asks.

Somin sees yet another argument that the the nondelegation doctrine applies. It allows broad delegations of power when they are based on an “intelligible principle.” Some Supreme Court justices have expressed interest in “tightening up” the doctrine, and a tariff challenge “might be a good opportunity to do just that,” he wrote.

Somin doesn’t argue that a challenge to tariffs is likely to succeed.

“But the arguments are strong,” he wrote, particularly those in support of the major questions doctrine.

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3. Accent stereotypes can influence judgments…

Criminal Justice

Accent stereotypes can influence judgments about guilt, study finds

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 27, 2025, 12:55 pm CST

A British study has found that people with accents linked to higher social status were generally judged less likely to commit crimes.

Working-class accents, on the other hand, were more likely to be associated with criminality, according to a Jan. 16 press release here and a Jan. 17 press release here.

“This shows that perceived social class, as judged from a speaker’s accent, is an important predictor of U.K. listeners’ expectations about behavior, and this might have serious implications in the criminal justice system,” said Alice Paver of the University of Cambridge, the lead study author, in one of the press releases.

Frontiers in Communication published the study, conducted by the University of Cambridge in collaboration with Nottingham Trent University.

Courthouse News Service and the Guardian have coverage.

The researchers asked 180 English-speaking people throughout the United Kingdom to listen to recordings of 10 male voices with differing regional accents. The participants were then asked to rate the voices on social traits, such as “educated,” “rich,” “working class,” “trustworthy” and “friendly.”

They were also asked to rate the voices on 10 behaviors that included crimes: “return a lost wallet to its owner,” “stand up for someone who is being harassed,” “cheat on a romantic partner,” “lie on their CV,” “report a relative to the police for a minor offense,” “drive dangerously,” “physically assault someone,” “shoplift,” “touch someone sexually without consent” and “vandalize a shop front.”

The standard southern British English accent was rated highly for status traits, such as intelligent educated and rich. The Liverpool, London and Newcastle accents were most associated with working class, followed by the Bradford accent.

Liverpool, Newcastle and Bradford accents were associated with aggressive behavior, while the standard southern British English accent was deemed least aggressive.

There was a strong correlation between status traits and ethical behaviors, such as returning a lost wallet to its owner, and a slightly stronger association between status traits and the morally ambiguous behavior of reporting a relative to police for a minor offense.

But there was a negative correlation between status traits and criminal behaviors.

Speakers with the standard southern British English accent were deemed least likely to behave in criminal ways, with the exception of committing a sex offense. Non-English accents associated with the two cities of Belfast, Northern Ireland, and Glasgow, Scotland, were also thought to be less likely to engage in crime.

The London and Liverpool speakers, on other hand, were deemed most likely to engage in morally bad behaviors, while the Liverpool and Bradford speakers were rated most likely to engage in criminal behaviors.

“These findings emphasize the fact that people carry with them their stereotyped judgments about accents when making attributions of guilt and this has serious implications for the criminal justice system,” study authors wrote. “Prejudice in the criminal justice system can come from many factors, but unlike some types, for example racial prejudice, voice or accent-based prejudice is not currently something that jurors may be aware of or warned against letting it sway their decisions.”

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The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Jan. 17 upholding the federal law banning TikTok continues a long history of judicial deference to claims of national security. The ruling upholds a federal statute that bans a medium of communication that is used by more than 170 million people in the United States. The speech of all who generate content for it and all who receive it is restricted by this law. It is difficult to think of any law in American history that restricted so much speech for so many people.

TikTok stopped operating in the United States for a brief time after the court’s decision. Upon taking office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order delaying the TikTok ban from going into effect for 75 days. It is questionable whether he has the authority to do this under the federal statute. But if no court enjoins his order, TikTok at least has a temporary reprieve. The ultimate fate of TikTok in this United States remains uncertain.

Factual background

On April 24, 2024, President Joe Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act into law. The act identifies the People’s Republic of China and three other countries as foreign adversaries of the United States and prohibits the distribution or maintenance of “foreign adversary controlled applications.” The law prohibited TikTok in the United States as of Jan. 19, unless its owner, ByteDance, had sold it by then.

Under the law, the president may grant a 90-day extension if there is significant progress being made toward a sale of TikTok. ByteDance has given no indication that it is interested in a sale, so it is difficult to see President Trump’s action fitting within this statutory authority.

On Dec. 6, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the federal law outlawing TikTok. The judges acknowledged the impact of the law on freedom of speech, but they accepted the government’s argument that national security concerns justified the ban.

First, the court said China, through TikTok, could gather information about those in the United States. Second, the court said China could attempt to use TikTok to influence attitudes, including about politics, in this country.

Supreme Court decision

The Supreme Court granted certiorari and scheduled oral argument for Jan. 10. A week later, the court unanimously affirmed the D.C. Circuit in a per curiam opinion.

At the outset, the court said there was the question of whether “heightened review” was appropriate when there was a regulation of nonexpressive activity (ownership of a platform) that disproportionately burdens those engaged in expressive activity (those who post on TikTok and receive information there). The court did not resolve that issue, instead declaring, “We assume without deciding that the challenged provisions fall within this category and are subject to First Amendment scrutiny.”

The court began by reciting the familiar principle that content-based regulations must meet strict scrutiny, while content neutral laws only need meet intermediate scrutiny. Under strict scrutiny, a law must be necessary to achieve a compelling purpose, while under intermediate scrutiny, a law only need be substantially related to an important purpose. A law is deemed content-based if either it restricts speech based on its topic or its viewpoint.

The court said that “As applied to petitioners, the challenged provisions are facially content neutral and are justified by a content-neutral rationale.” The court explained that the federal statute was content- neutral because it prohibited all speech over TikTok in the United States, whatever its topic and whatever its viewpoint.

The court identified the government’s purpose as preventing China, a foreign adversary, from gathering large amounts of information on Americans using the platform. And it expressly declared that this was a sufficiently important interest to meet intermediate scrutiny: “The act’s prohibitions and divestiture requirement are designed to prevent China—a designated foreign adversary—from leveraging its control over ByteDance Ltd. to capture the personal data of U. S. TikTok users. This objective qualifies as an important Government interest under intermediate scrutiny.”

The court said China could gather vast amounts of information about users of TikTok that could include enabling “China to track the locations of federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.” The court stressed that the case arose in the context of “national security and foreign policy,” and therefore concluded that “we must accord substantial deference to the predictive judgments of Congress.”

Notably, the court did not echo the D.C. Circuit’s conclusion that the TikTok ban was justified because China might use it to influence attitudes in the United States. The premise of the First Amendment is that more speech is inherently better, regardless of its source. Restricting speech because it might change minds is antithetical to the First Amendment. Even during the height of the Cold War, the United States allowed the Russian newspaper Pravda to be sold in this country.

The challengers argued that the purpose of the federal law was to prevent TikTok to be used to convey particular views. The court acknowledged that no prior cases had determined “the appropriate level of First Amendment scrutiny for an act of Congress justified on both content-neutral and content-based grounds.”

The court said it did not need to decide that issue, but then effectively did by declaring: “The record before us adequately supports the conclusion that Congress would have passed the challenged provisions based on the data collection justification alone.” This is an important clarification of First Amendment law: If a government action is justified by both content-based and content-neutral rationales, it will be treated as content-neutral so long as the court is convinced that the law would have been adopted anyway based on the content-neutral rationale.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor concurred in part and concurred in the judgment. She agreed with the decision but said the court should have held, not just assumed, that the ban on TikTok is expressive activity. She said, “TikTok engages in expressive activity by ‘compiling and curating’ material on its platform.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch concurred in the judgment. He questioned whether the law was actually content-neutral but said it was constitutional under any level of scrutiny. He wrote: “I am persuaded that the law before us seeks to serve a compelling interest: preventing a foreign country, designated by Congress and the president as an adversary of our oation, from harvesting vast troves of personal information about tens of millions of Americans.”

Analysis

No one in the litigation disputes that TikTok can gain a great deal of information about users of its platform. Nor was it disputed that this information potentially could be obtained by China.

What is missing in the court’s analysis is a discussion of what information China can obtain and how that information can be used to damage national security. It is certainly true that every app allows those administering it to gather information about users. But knowing how many people are watching a dance video hardly seems a basis for endangering the country. Because the federal law is a very significant restriction on speech there must be a real, proven danger, not conjecture.

None of the briefs elaborates this, either. Nor is it the case that the court relied on secret information provided by the government to justify the law. Justice Gorsuch observed: “I am pleased that the court declines to consider the classified evidence the government has submitted to us but shielded from petitioners and their counsel.”

The court should have explained in much greater detail what information China could gain from TikTok users and how China possessing this information could harm the United States.

Ultimately then, what explains the court’s conclusion is not a proven likely harm to national security from TikTok. Rather, it is the court giving deference to the government’s claim that TikTok is a threat to national security. There have been many cases throughout American history where the court has professed such deference. But the crucial question is whether such deference is appropriate when it involves a major restriction on the exercise of a fundamental right.

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Erwin Chemerinsky is dean of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. He is an expert in constitutional law, federal practice, civil rights and civil liberties, and appellate litigation. He’s also the author of many books, including No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States and A Court Divided: October Term 2023 (2024).

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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.

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3. Supreme Court will decide whether TikTok…

U.S. Supreme Court

Supreme Court will decide whether TikTok ban violates the First Amendment

By Debra Cassens Weiss

December 18, 2024, 2:17 pm CST

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider the constitutionality of a law that bans TikTok in the United States if the company isn’t sold.

Oral arguments in the First Amendment challenge are scheduled for Jan. 10 in two consolidated cases seeking emergency applications for an injunction. One was filed by TikTok and ByteDance, its owner. The other was filed by TikTok users.

The TikTok ban is “a massive and unprecedented speech restriction,” the company argued in its Supreme Court request.

SCOTUSblog, Law360, the Washington Post and the New York Times are among the publications with coverage.

TikTok must be sold or face a U.S. ban under the Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. The law bans apps controlled by China and three countries identified as foreign adversaries of the United States, SCOTUSblog explains. The deadline for compliance is Jan. 19.

Lawmakers who supported the law said TikTok is a security threat because the Chinese government has oversight of private companies, the New York Times explains.

In an amicus brief, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said TikTok is a threat because it is “under the direct control of the Chinese Communist Party.”

The goal of the law, the brief said, “is to further the highly compelling state interest of preventing Chinese Communist mining of American data and deployment of subversive enemy propaganda through algorithmic curation.”

TikTok users’ injunction application notes that Vice President Kamala Harris and President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on TikTok during the 2024 presidential election, “thereby implicitly encouraging Americans to use the app.”

Trump said at a news conference on Monday he has a “warm spot in my heart for TikTok.”

The Supreme Court granted review after treating the emergency injunction applications as cert petitions, as suggested by the briefs.

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3. Does judge’s reference to ‘little Chinese…

Judiciary

Does judge’s reference to ‘little Chinese woman’ show bias? Appellate concurrence sees ‘pure stereotyping’

By Debra Cassens Weiss

December 19, 2024, 1:42 pm CST

A California judge who said he was almost amused when a “little Chinese woman” stared him down did not rule against her based on ethnic bias, but his comment was “pure stereotyping,” according to two concurring judges in an appellate opinion.

The California Courts of Appeal’s Second Appellate District certified the Nov. 27 opinion for publication Dec. 17 after receiving requests that it do so from the California Civility Task Force and the Orange County Asian American Bar Association, Law360 reports. Published opinions can be cited as precedent.

The case involved a dispute between the plaintiff, Natalie Lloyd Merrick, and her mother over funds from the sale of a condo in China. Merrick was awarded more than $242,000 from the sale, leading to a dispute over the amount of prejudgment interest.

Judge Randolph M. Hammock of Los Angeles County, California, ruled against Merrick on the interest issue in June 2022 and awarded mandatory attorney fees of about $2,000 to the mother.

During the final hearing, Hammock made these comments: “I already rejected those arguments. OK. I know your client was not happy with my ruling [at a previous hearing]. I mean, she was there, you know, mad dogging me, which didn’t bother me at all. It was almost amusing to see this little Chinese woman stare me down because she didn’t like the ruling. But again, it’s just business. I didn’t take it personally.”

The appeals court opinion by Judge Elizabeth A. Grimes said there is no reason to believe that Hammock harbored any bias against Merrick. She added, however, that “unnecessary references to a litigant’s ethnicity and gender are certainly to be avoided.”

In a concurring opinion, Judge Maria E. Stratton agreed that Hammock’s “gratuitous comments” did not influence his ruling. His findings were supported by evidence, and his decision was based on a realistic evaluation of facts. But his comments “cannot pass without censure,” she said in the concurrence joined by Judge Victor Viramontes.

Stratton asserted that Hammock’s “patronizing description” of Merrick violated judicial canons requiring judges to be dignified and courteous, to act in a manner that promotes confidence in the judiciary, and to refrain from conduct that would reasonably be perceived as biased.

“Beyond being generally demeaning,” Stratton wrote, “the trial judge’s fatuous comment traded on racist and sexist tropes.” Hammock found it almost amusing that Merrick, “a little Chinese woman,” stared him down, she wrote.

“Implicit in the court’s identification of these characteristics as what made Merrick’s conduct funny was the concept that her behavior was incongruous; that is, someone like Merrick was neither expected nor supposed to act in a certain manner. This is pure stereotyping. How should a ‘little Chinese woman’ have acted? Like the stereotype of an Asian woman—demure, meek, eager to please, deferential to men?”

Stratton acknowledged that Hammock’s comment may have been “unwitting” and said such remarks implicate implicit bias, which can influence behaviors without awareness.

Stratton added that “being mindful of the stereotypes we all carry” is part of a judge’s job.

“Reining in impulses, our inner autopilot, to make random comments that personally denigrate a litigant is also part of our job,” she wrote.

Hammock told the ABA Journal that he couldn’t comment because there is no final judgment yet.

Hammock apologized for his conduct to his presiding judge after the appellate opinion was issued.

“Suffice it to state, I am extremely embarrassed and regretful of those comments,” he said in a letter self-reporting his conduct to the judge.

Hammock’s letter said he accepts that his comments violated judicial canons.

“I have certainly thought long and hard as to my actions in this regard, and moreover, I have considered what I need to do myself in order to take the appropriate ‘corrective actions’ needed to ensure that such violations do not occur again by me,” Hammock wrote.

The first step, Hammock wrote, was to self-report. He has also read publications on implicit bias mentioned in the concurrence and plans to take the next judicial course offered on the subject.

“You can rest assured that I will strive to do my best to learn a serious lesson from this incident and to act accordingly,” Hammock wrote. “I must and will do better.”

In 80 countries around the world over the past 30 years, the ABA Rule of Law Initiative (ROLI) has worked with lawyers, judges and civil society to promote the rule of law.

Key among its programs have been safeguarding the independent judiciary; emphasizing the important role the judiciary plays in a democratic society; working with civil society and non-governmental organizations to strengthen the judiciary and provide access to justice; and training judges, lawyers and government officials on ethics, transparency, constitutional protections and substantive areas such as procedure, corruption, human trafficking, Internet freedom and human rights.

In addition, ROLI has developed tools to assess judicial independence. This sustained effort over three decades has had a major impact in shaping judiciaries and protecting judicial independence. This work has been done through judicial and lawyer volunteers, and professional staff drawn primarily from the locales where ROLI has worked.

In recognition of this work, the Federal Judges Association of the United States successfully nominated ROLI to receive the Judicial Independence Award from the International Judges Association (IAJ), the largest association of jurists with member organizations in 92 countries across all continents.

In making the award, IAJ President Duro Sessa of Croatia highlighted “The role of ABA-ROLI, the courage and the absolute commitment of its prestigious members” and “the long standing engagement of ABA ROLI in defense of the values of rule of law and judicial independence and its programs aimed at strengthening legal institutions, supporting legal professions, fostering respect for human rights and advancing public understanding of the law and of citizen rights.”

On behalf of ROLI, Judge M. Margaret McKeown from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at San Francisco accepted the award in October in a ceremony in Cape Town, South Africa, at the General Assembly of the Central Council of the IAJ. McKeown serves as vice chair of the ROLI Board (along with Debra Enix Ross) and is a United States delegate to the IAJ. The chair of the ROLI board is former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

Origins of ROLI

After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, a renaissance in legal and political reform spread through Eastern Europe and the former Soviet states. In response, the ABA founded the Central and European Law Initiative (CEELI), which responded to calls for help in drafting constitutions and statutes, building legal institutions and promoting a culture of law. Instead of advocating for an American-centric approach, CEELI let the host country partners take the lead in shaping the programs.

By 2000, over 5,000 volunteers from around the world had focused on judicial restructuring in both criminal and commercial law. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, was a leader in the initiative.

Building on the success in Europe and Central Asia, the initiative expanded to Asia in 1998 and, by 2000, to Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean. Several years later, the programs extended to the Middle East and North Africa. ROLI is governed by a board of volunteer judges and lawyers.

Strengthening governance and justice systems

An essential component of ROLI’s work is the strengthening of governance and justice systems. These efforts extend across the justice section, from the bench to the bar, the public square and the classroom. Importantly, this work has focused on long-term institutional changes that strengthen the judiciary. While ROLI has sponsored a number of meetings and conferences focused on judicial independence, understanding the nature of the on-the-ground work provides a more nuanced view of ROLI’s impact.

Some projects undertaken by ROLI

   • Developing and implementing the Judicial Reform Index to assess judicial reform and independence, using comparative analyses of legal traditions, international standards and regional norms. Not long ago, ROLI brought together key players in the area to consider how to measure success in justice reform.

   • Collaborating in 2023 with the Southern East African Chief Justices Forum to provide legal guidance for judicial officers and creating the Bench Book on Computer Crimes and Cybercrimes in Southern Africa.

   • Working with judges from Pakistan, Egypt, Poland, Turkey, Algeria and Venezuela, among others, to craft and implement ethics codes.

   • Sponsoring an international symposium for East African high court justices and judges on combating international and transnational crimes, including participation by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

   • Cooperating with the courts in the Philippines to address access to the court system, automation of court records and nationwide implementation of small-claims procedures.

   • Partnering with ministries of justice, local courts, law schools and national training centers to assist in the monumental process of shifting from the inquisitorial to the adversarial model in criminal justice. Intensive training has been the hallmark of programs in the Balkans, Ukraine, Moldova, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Peru, Ecuador, Panama and Mexico.

   • Building confidence in the judiciary through community trust, including working with hundred of judges on a Judicial Media Guide, instructing on the ethical bounds of judges’ relationships with the media.

   • Opening mobile courts in Africa to promote access to justice in human trafficking and domestic violence cases.

   • Sponsoring “Roads to Justice” programs in Mexico, Morocco and Panama to promote transparency and combat corruption by education citizens and connecting courts to the citizens.

   • Promoting transitional justice programs in Mali after a coup resulted in massive human rights abuses. Similarly, ROLi as worked in Moldova, Armenia, Nepal and Russia, undertaking training on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention of Human Rights.

   • Prioritizing judicial work in the human trafficking arena, including creating a Human Trafficking Assessment Tool to measure compliance with the United Nations Trafficking Protocol. Recent programs included a collaboration with the judiciary in Colombia. Given the magnitude of the challenge, nearly 28 million victims worldwide, ROLI has worked with judiciaries in countries ranging from the Solomon Islands to Haiti.

The award is particularly timely in light of ROLI’s expanding work in the judicial arena and the increasing pressure on judicial independence from authoritarian regimes in many parts of the world.

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ABA Abroad is a column highlighting the work of the ABA’s Center for Global Programs, which comprises the Rule of Law Initiative, Center for Human Rights and the ABA’s presence at the United Nations.

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