Policy & Positions

WASHINGTON, May 29, 2020 – The American Bar Association is troubled and saddened by events in Minneapolis and other places that underscore the violence against people of color - including police brutality— that still plagues our country despite the great strides our nation has made in recent decades to advance justice and civil rights.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 9, 2019 – The American Bar Association joins the world Tuesday in recognizing International Human Rights Day. The day provides an opportunity to commemorate – and renew our commitment to – the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 18, 2018 — The American Bar Association commends Congress for reauthorizing the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Reauthorization Act (JJDPA) of 2018 and urges President Trump to sign the bill into law. The bipartisan legislation is the first reauthorization of the 1974 law in 16 years and caps a long effort by the ABA to see protections for juveniles strengthened.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20, 2018 — The American Bar Association applauds the passage of the First Step Act by Congress and urges President Donald Trump to sign it into law. Our criminal justice system is in urgent need of reform and this bill is an important step towards achieving comprehensive improvements.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 10, 2018 — The American Bar Association joins the world today in commemorating Human Rights Day and the 70th anniversary of the United States’ adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

On this day 50 years ago, the world lost Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. During his 39 years, cut tragically short, Dr. King led a movement that accomplished more genuine progress toward racial equality than in the prior three centuries.

The American Bar Association sent a letter to the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee urging them to approve S. 1917, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2017, without weakening amendments in advance of next week’s markup of the bill.

American Bar Association president Hilarie Bass sent a letter to the chairman and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee expressing the ABA’s support of H.R. 2899, the Second Chance Reauthorization Act of 2017.

The American Bar Association is disappointed that a pardon was granted to former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio. While the Constitution affords the president broad powers to pardon, the ABA believes this authority should be used in a manner that does not undermine the public’s trust in our justice system.

The American Bar Association stands dedicated to the principles of equality and justice in our country and denounces those who attempt to subvert those values.

The American Bar Association abhors the violence and crimes committed in Charlottesville, Va. this weekend. With the families, we mourn the loss of life as a result of this violence. We wish a speedy recovery to those who are injured.

The American Bar Association joins the world community in recognizing International Criminal Justice Day 2017, as well as the 15th anniversary of the movement’s crowning achievement, the International Criminal Court.

WASHINGTON, July 8, 2016 – The American Bar Association is deeply troubled by the events of the past few days. The incidents are at the same time heartbreaking, infuriating and terrifying. Our civil society and the safety of all in it – citizens and law enforcement – rely on the rule of law.

WASHINGTON, June 27, 2016 -- The American Bar Association welcomes the Department of Justice’s decision to implement mandatory, department-wide implicit bias training for all law enforcement agents and prosecutors.

WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 1, 2015 -- The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act unveiled today is a landmark step forward that represents the most significant criminal justice reform in decades.

WASHINGTON, June 30, 2014 — As we observe the anniversary of our nation's independence this week, the American Bar Association also celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on July 2, 1964, this landmark legislation extended the protections of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights specifically to African Americans but also to others.

WASHINGTON, April 13, 2020 — The American Bar Association, in conjunction with the Law School Admission Counsel, Microsoft and Coffee + Dunn, today announced the launch of a new platform that enables organizations participating in the ABA Model Diversity Survey to easily and efficiently obtain the information provided by their law firms that complete the survey. Companies can electronically request, access and review their outside law firm’s diversity data in real time. Law firms, in turn, can submit their data online in an efficient and streamlined process.

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 19, 2019 — The American Bar Association will join with nonprofit Arnold Ventures as a partner in a new grant-funded community effort dedicated to reducing unjust and unnecessary pretrial detention.

CHICAGO, Jan. 29, 2019 — The American Bar Association filed an amicus brief Monday with the U.S. Supreme Court, contending that the Calhoun, Ga., bail system, which ties pretrial release directly to a fixed-payment schedule of offenses, violates the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the 14th Amendment.

With highly publicized incidents dominating the news, the American Bar Association posted today a new ABA Legal Fact Check exploring what legally constitutes reasonable force when a police officer shoots a civilian.

CHICAGO, Sept. 12, 2018 – A new report by the American Bar Association provides a first-of-its-kind look at access to justice commissions nationwide, offering an in-depth analysis of their structures, activities, staffing and funding as well as best-practice recommendations.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 6, 2018 – Despite efforts to reverse the trend, a new study confirms widespread gender and racial bias permeates hiring, promotion, assignments and compensation in the legal industry. Fifty-eight percent of women attorneys of color, and half of white women lawyers surveyed say they have been mistaken for administrative staff or janitors, according to the new study, You Can’t Change What You Can’t See, released today. In glaring contrast, only seven percent of white male lawyers report a similar occurrence.

To mark the United Nations’ International Day of Democracy, the American Bar Association has sent a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson noting the need to continue prioritizing the promotion of democracy, human rights, justice and the rule of law.

The American Bar Association’s new Center for Innovation is developing a browser-based app designed to help victims of hate crimes identify, report and find resources in their local communities.

The American Bar Association’s Task Force on Building Public Trust in the American Justice System released a report today outlining ways for lawyers and communities to work together to build public trust and confidence in the criminal justice system.

WASHINGTON, June 22, 2016 — The American Bar Association Section of Criminal Justice released “The State of Criminal Justice 2016,” which each year examines major issues, trends and significant changes in the U.S. criminal justice system.

CHICAGO, July 31, 2014 -The American Bar Association today announced the release of a report that provides a new empirical method for public defender systems to document how excessive caseloads deny indigent criminal defendants the constitutional right to effective counsel. Focusing on the Missouri public defender system, the report shows that public defenders across the state have insufficient time to devote to all aspects of their cases -from client communication to discovery, investigation and case preparation.

Kimberly Norwood, the Henry H. Oberschelp Professor of Law at the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, remembers getting her hair straightened as a child. Using sound effects to describe the hot metal comb gliding through her strands, she called the process debilitating because children often couldn’t play outside afterward, fearing that humidity, sweat or water would revert their hair to an afro or natural curl pattern.

“I’ve had a front-row view of injustice for most of my life,” said Mimi Marziani at “Celebrating Democracy: 150 Years of Voting Rights,” held Feb. 14 at the American Bar Association Midyear Meeting in Austin, Texas.

The school-to-prison pipeline is a relatively new term for a problem that has been plaguing America for years. It describes failures in the education system where certain groups of students—students of color, with disabilities, or LGBTQ — are disproportionately disciplined more harshly, including referral to law enforcement for minimal misbehavior; achieve at lower levels; and eventually drop or are pushed out of school, often into juvenile justice facilities and prison.

he American Bar Association Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession awarded five recipients its 2020 Spirit of Excellence Award during a luncheon on Feb. 15 at the ABA Midyear Meeting in Austin, Texas.

Last summer, the Utah Supreme Court took what many consider a revolutionary step in regulatory legal change. The court unanimously approved a working group report that lays out recommendations for narrowing the access to justice gap by reimagining lawyer regulation.

“I’m not a lawyer, but I know a little something about the law,” said civil rights icon John Lewis as he accepted the Thurgood Marshall Award from the ABA Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice on Saturday, Aug. 10, at the ABA Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

What can the courts and counsel can do to stop the school-to-prison pipeline, in which a disproportionately large number of U.S. young people of color are funneled out of public schools and into the criminal justice system?

The modern legacy of the long struggle to obtain the right to vote for all female U.S. citizens was the subject of a panel discussion on Aug. 9 at the American Bar Association Annual Meeting in San Francisco, touching on the restoration of the right to vote for felons who have served their time, the debate over voter suppression versus voter fraud and the hostility facing women electoral candidates.

Working as a sexual assault prosecutor in the 1990s, Nancy E. O’Malley recalled the case of a 12-year-old raped by a 50-year-old man in a motel room and sold by a 39-year-old man. When the girl explained what her life was like, O’Malley realized “we as a community, we as professionals, we in the legal community and we in the advocate community all have a role to play” in helping to prevent human trafficking. Since then, she said, “We have come a very long way,” although “there is still so much further to go.”

For five years beginning in 1933, the Nazi regime in Germany systematically purged Jewish lawyers and jurists from the legal profession. For the most part, non-Jewish lawyers there remained silent as more than 4,000 of their Jewish colleagues lost their livelihoods.

California attorney John Lim, who immigrated to the United States with his parents from South Korea in 1967, was presented with the 2019 Spirit of Excellence Award by the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession for his commitment to diversity during a ceremony on Jan. 26 at the ABA Midyear Meeting in Las Vegas.

In the era of the “app,” digital legal tools offer encouraging signs to narrow a justice gap that has plagued the United States in recent years, leaving nearly 9 out of 10 low-income Americans without services for civil legal needs.

On Jan. 29, six days before the New England Patriots take on the Los Angeles Rams at the Superbowl in Atlanta, the city will be the site of the ATL End Human Trafficking Summit, a citywide effort to help end human trafficking.

With the American Bar Association hosting its Midyear Meeting in Las Vegas, the ABA Commission on Homelessness and Poverty held a Jan. 25 program to address the problem of homelessness among youth in Southern Nevada.

December proved to be a very good month for criminal justice reform in the United States. Congress passed two pieces of legislation that the American Bar Association supported and lobbied for — the reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) and the First Step Act. President Donald Trump signed both into law Friday, Dec. 21, marking the most significant legislative progress towards criminal justice system reform in a generation. Both bills passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.

Six New Orleans police officers and detectives are now carrying large laminated cards with pictorial representations that incorporate a recording of the Miranda warning in Spanish and have a Spanish-language video of the Miranda warning in their cars as well. The tools, demonstrated Saturday at the American Bar Association Annual Meeting in Chicago, developed from a unique collaboration with the ABA Center for Innovation and other ABA entities, New Orleans police, the ITT Institute of Design and law students in Chicago and New Orleans.

In accepting the Thurgood Marshall Award from the American Bar Association for his long-term contributions to the advancement of civil rights, civil liberties and human rights in the United States, former U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., didn’t say he was running for president, but he certainly sounded like he was.

Terri Carmichael Jackson was just three months into her new job leading the women’s basketball players union when her phone began ringing like crazy. It was bad news: The league was fining many of her 144 players for wearing unauthorized T-shirts during warmups.

As drug courts continue to grow in popularity in the United States with more than 3,100, so do the challenges facing these problem-solving courts in the state and federal criminal justice system. Legal experts from across the country addressed some of the challenges and talked about solutions during a panel discussion, “The Future of Problem-Solving Courts: Where Do We Go From Here,” on Aug. 3 at the ABA Annual Meeting in Chicago.

Young people involved in the child welfare or juvenile justice system—including homeless youth—frequently travel through myriad public systems. Many of them have experienced high levels of trauma, violence, instability and loss, so the journey is rarely straightforward or pleasant.

Bryan Stevenson had four things he wanted ABA lawyers to take away from his talk. The founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala., received the ABA Medal, the association’s highest honor, on Saturday at the General Assembly of the Annual Meeting in Chicago. The Harvard Law School graduate, who recently won a historic ruling that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for children 17 and younger are unconstitutional, advised the association’s attorneys to:

Since the American Bar Association House of Delegates adopted a model rule two-and-a-half years ago, strengthening language against discrimination and sexual and other harassment, only one state, Vermont, has embraced the recommended language that included “conduct in the practice of law.”

“Young people who are homeless often come to the streets having experienced trauma,” said Stephen Gaetz, the head of the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness and the Homeless Hub and the author of Without a Home: The National Youth Homelessness Survey, the largest national study of youth homelessness in Canada, which was released last year. “And they are often further traumatized on the streets.”

The ABA Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession honored four 2018 The Spirit of Excellence Award recipients for their commitment to racial and ethnic diversity in the legal profession. The awards were presented during a luncheon on Feb. 3 at the ABA Midyear Meeting in Vancouver.

In most states, the costs of the criminal justice system – such as the expense of a public defender, room and board in jail, and the cost of parole supervision – are no longer free and are being increasingly shouldered by defendants and offenders.

Former New York Appeals Court Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, an access to justice champion, celebrated with lawyers who have been committed to pro bono work and challenged others of the legal profession in his keynote address to do more because it’s not only an ethical and moral obligation, but it’s “what being a lawyer is all about.”

The American Bar Association takes on the Great White Way! No, attorneys did not don greasepaint and belt out show tunes. But they did partner with a group of Broadway entertainers at a rally to help raise awareness of the importance of funding Legal Services Corporation.

A panel of lawyers explored the difficult topic of implicit bias within the legal profession, pointing out that understanding bias begins with better appreciation of one’s own prejudices.

According to the American Bar Foundation, the United States has more people incarcerated per capita than any other country in the world and half of those imprisoned are parents.

The contact sport of football would appear to have little in common with the legal field of dispute resolution, where parties try to negotiate results rather than run over each other.

The American Bar Association presented awards to three individual lawyers and two law firms for demonstrating outstanding commitment to volunteer legal services for the poor and disadvantaged at its Annual Meeting in August in San Francisco.

“Laws keep changing, but you can’t legislate change in people’s hearts and minds,” said Ainka Jackson, executive director of the Selma Center for Nonviolence, Truth and Reconciliation and member of the ABA Commission on Homelessness and Poverty. Jackson was referring to her journey on the commission and pursuing its mission in underserved communities during her presentation as part of “10 Ways to Change the World,” sponsored by the newly formed ABA Center for Public Interest Law, held Jan. 25 at the Midyear Meeting in Las Vegas.

By now you have heard of implicit bias, explicit bias, racial bias, gender bias and how the unconscious forming of attitudes and stereotypes affects our understanding about and actions related to members of a social group ¬-- from the courtroom, to the boardroom and to our everyday walk.

The controversy over Confederate monuments gained greater national prominence following the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, when white nationalists protested the planned removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, resulting in a violent clash between opposing parties.

In honor of the 10th anniversary of the National Celebration of Pro Bono, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan sat down with American Bar Association President Bob Carlson at Georgetown University Law Center on Oct. 24 to discuss pro bono service, how her prior experience serves her as a justice, whether or not the Supreme Court is politicized and more.

“If you were to fill Petco Park [the 42,445-seat baseball park in San Diego] to capacity with low-income people, there would be just two lawyers to serve them all.” That was the stark image summoned by Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California Goodwin Liu, the keynote speaker at the National Meeting of State Access to Justice Commission Chairs, held in conjunction with the ABA Equal Justice Conference in San Diego in May.