Collaboration for Justice and the Court Transparency Coalition

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts and the Chicago Council of Lawyers—the Collaboration for Justice—are pleased to be part of the Court Transparency Coalition, led by the Better Government Association. As advocates for fair and open courts, Chicago Appleseed and the Council of Lawyers h...
January 4, 2023

Illinois Pretrial Practices Data Oversight Board Provides Few Solutions

On July 1, 2022, the Pretrial Practices Data Oversight Board (“Board”) released a preliminary report in an effort to satisfy statutory requirements laid out in the Pretrial Fairness Act sections of Public Act 101-0652, known as the SAFE-T Act. Per the new law, the Board, convened last July by the Ad...
July 15, 2022

Public (In)Access to Judicial Branch Data in Illinois

In 2019, Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts and our pro bono partner, DLA Piper, looked at the open records laws, the Freedom of Information Act, and other public access policies in all 50 states to determine where Illinois stands in terms of judicial transparency.  We found that Illin...
August 27, 2021

Impact of New Marijuana Ordinance Difficult to Predict Without Data

Tracy Siska, at the Chicago Just Project, evaluates the Chicago Cannabis Ordinance (pdf), the "Pot Ticket" law that just passed Chicago's City Council. Most importantly, he points out, there's no way to predict the law's impact because we have so little data on how the current laws are enforced and...
July 2, 2012