All posts tagged: state courts

The interpreters using their bilingual proficiency to give others ‘a voice in the courtroom’

The interpreters using their bilingual proficiency to give others ‘a voice in the courtroom’

Published by Sam

Looking up published judgements to practise their interpretation skills, shadowing senior interpreters and attending “mock court sessions” are among the activities that help new interpreters get up to speed.  Mr Tay underwent a six-month induction programme, including “competency training” to familiarise himself with common English and Chinese terms used in court proceedings at the Family Justice Courts.  “(We might simulate) a mock court session on a case, perhaps about maintenance applications … So our seniors will roleplay as the parties (and) come up with certain dialogues that are quite representative or reflective of the situation in court. We practise accordingly to gain our confidence,” he shared.  The courts also provide in-house programmes and specialised external training to help interpreters hone their techniques, including note-taking. But a bulk of the learning happens on the job and is often self-motivated. Most of their time is spent doing background research for the cases they are assigned, because interpreting is more multifaceted than “just going to court and rendering service”, said Ms Nabilah.  She familiarises herself with case-specific information …

The Supreme Court’s Colorado Opinion Is About Fear, Not Law

The Supreme Court’s Colorado Opinion Is About Fear, Not Law

Published by skeptic

This is The Trump Trials by George T. Conway III, a newsletter that chronicles the former president’s legal troubles. Sign up here. You can’t always get what you want. What Mick Jagger said about life applies with equal, perhaps even greater, force to litigation. Like life, litigation has its ups and downs. It reflects human fears and frailties—because judges, lawyers, and litigants are human. Law is never perfect, and never will be. And so it is with the United States Supreme Court’s decision yesterday in Trump v. Anderson, which unanimously reversed the Supreme Court of Colorado’s decision barring Donald Trump from the state’s presidential-primary ballot. Trump’s brazen effort to end constitutional democracy in America should have been the textbook example of the sort of behavior that would lead to someone being barred from holding public office under the Fourteenth Amendment. But it was not to be, and never was to be. I talked with a lot of people about the Colorado case over the past three months, and I didn’t come across a single person …

The Cases Against Trump: A Guide

The Cases Against Trump: A Guide

Published by skeptic

Not long ago, the idea that a former president—or major-party presidential nominee—would face serious legal jeopardy was nearly unthinkable. Today, merely keeping track of the many cases against Donald Trump requires a law degree, a great deal of attention, or both. In all, Trump faces 91 felony counts across two state courts and two different federal districts, any of which could potentially produce a prison sentence. He’s also dealing with a civil suit in New York that could force drastic changes to his business empire, including closing down its operations in his home state. Meanwhile, he is the leading Republican candidate in the race to become the next president. If the court cases unfold with any reasonable timeliness, he could be in the heat of the campaign trail at the same time that his legal fate is being decided. David A. Graham: The end of Trump Inc. Here’s a summary of the major legal cases against Trump, including key dates, an assessment of the gravity of the charges, and expectations about how they could turn …

Wisconsin and North Carolina Republicans Are Playing a Dangerous New Game

Wisconsin and North Carolina Republicans Are Playing a Dangerous New Game

Published by skeptic

Even as U.S. politics became more contentious and polarized over the past quarter century, a few pockets of the government remained comparatively above the fray, including the courts, which sought to position themselves apart from politics, and state capitols, where pragmatism trumped partisanship. But those redoubts have fallen in recent years. The Supreme Court has become more ideologically aligned with the Republican Party, and state legislatures host pitched ideological battles. Now institutions that sit at their intersection—state courts, especially state supreme courts—have emerged as a site of bitter fights. This fall, Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature are mulling plans to impeach Janet Protasiewicz, a recently elected liberal justice on the state supreme court, before she has even heard a case—by all appearances for the crime of having been elected as an outspoken liberal. In North Carolina, Anita Earls, a liberal justice on the state supreme court, has sued the state’s Judicial Standards Commission over an investigation it began into fairly anodyne comments she made about implicit racial bias in a press interview. These two examples …

Red States Are Rolling Back the Rights Revolution

Red States Are Rolling Back the Rights Revolution

Published by skeptic

The struggle over the sweeping red-state drive to roll back civil rights and liberties has primarily moved to the courts. Since 2021, Republican-controlled states have passed a swarm of laws to restrict voting rights, increase penalties for public protest, impose new restrictions on transgender youth, ban books, and limit what teachers, college professors, and employers can say about race, gender, and sexual orientation. Some states are even exploring options to potentially prosecute people who help women travel out of state to obtain an abortion. In the early legal skirmishing over this agenda, opponents including the federal Justice Department have won a surprising number of decisions, mostly in federal courts, blocking states from implementing the new laws. But eventually most of these issues are likely to be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court, and the court’s six-member Republican-appointed majority has generally ruled in ways that favor the conservative social-policy priorities reflected in the red-state actions. That inclination was most dramatically demonstrated in last year’s Dobbs decision, when the Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion. In …

The First Great Crisis of a Second Trump Term

The First Great Crisis of a Second Trump Term

Published by skeptic

Both his supporters and and his opponents assume that former President Donald Trump’s legal jeopardy will go away if he can win the 2024 presidential election. That’s a big mistake. A Trump election in 2024 would settle nothing. It would generate a nation-shaking crisis of presidential legitimacy. Trump in 2024 means chaos—and almost certainly another impeachment. Trump’s proliferating criminal exposures have arisen in two different federal jurisdictions—Florida and the District of Columbia—and in two different state jurisdictions, New York and Georgia. More may follow. As president, Trump would have no power of his own to quash directly any of these proceedings. He would have to act through others. For example, the most nearly unilateral thing that Trump could try would be a presidential self-pardon. Is that legal? Trump has asserted that it is. Only the Supreme Court can deliver a final verdict, which presents a significant risk to Trump, because the Court might say no. Self-pardon defies the history and logic of the presidential-pardon power. Would a Supreme Court struggling with legitimacy issues of its …