Regulating Stingray Technology:  A Statement from the Chicago Council of Lawyers

he Civil Liberties Committee of the Chicago Council of Lawyers has called on the state of Illinois to regulate the government's use of Stingray technology. On January 20, 2016, Representative Ann Williams of Chicago introduced Illinois House Bill 4470 to regulate the use by government bodies of cell...
February 15, 2016

CCL Statement on Necessary Reforms to Promote Police Accountability

  The Chicago Council of Lawyers (CCL) is calling for a necessary reforms to promote police accountability in Chicago. In a statement released this week, the CCL specifically criticized the terms of the city's collective bargaining agreement with the police union, which permit an officer to "c...
February 10, 2016

Budget Standoff Threatens Flagship Court Reform

The Chicago Daily Law Bulletin published an editorial by Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice regarding the impact of the state fiscal crisis on the state's flagship prison diversion program, Adult Redeploy Illinois. The full text is reprinted below and a .pdf is available here: In this week’s state...
February 4, 2016

Ruling in Sanchez v. Torres in the Illinois Appellate Court

In August, Chicago Appleseed joined an amicus authored by the Domestic Violence Legal Empowerment and Appeals Project of the George Washington University Law School and attorneys at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP filed before the Illinois Appellate court in Sanchez v. Torres. At issue in the case w...
February 2, 2016

Constitutionality and the Six Member Jury

In June of this year, an amendment to 735 ILCS 5/2-1105 went into effect, reducing the size of juries in civil trials in Illinois from twelve jurors to six. The ostensible purpose of the reduction in jury size was to accommodate a rise in juror pay (from $17.20 per day in Cook County to $25 for the...
January 6, 2016