Word: districts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Tamm: "Federal judges are working harder than they ever did in private practice, but they never get their heads above water." Worn down by the work load, comparing their salaries ($54,500 to $57,500) with the six-figure incomes of really successful lawyers, a discouraging number of federal district and circuit judges are going back into private practice. One of the 17 who have left since 1970, former Chief Judge Sidney O. Smith Jr., of the U.S. District Court in Atlanta, returned to his old law firm in 1974 to make enough money (twice as much) so that...
...chief judge of a federal district court whose jurisdiction includes Los Angeles and 11 million people, Hill could hardly be in a better position to "vindicate" (a favorite word) individual rights. The great expansion of the "due process" and "equal protection" guarantees under the 14th Amendment over the past two decades has taken place largely in the federal courts, and it is to the federal district courts that people come first to assert their constitutional rights. Hill has struck down a California law barring aliens from certain public jobs, and is especially proud of his decision holding that to deny...
...Philadelphia, birthplace of American democracy, local judges are popularly elected. More accurately, they are chosen by the political party in power and then automatically voted in by apathetic voters. They are selected, says District Attorney Edward G. Rendell, not for integrity, legal ability or judicial temperament. "Instead," says Rendell, "these questions are asked: What has the lawyer done for the political party nominating him? What has he contributed to the party in time and money?" The result, say Philadelphia's lawyers, is "a sad bench...
...West, judges rode the circuit on horseback with two indispensable tools of justice in their saddlebags: a copy of Blackstone's Commentaries and a flask of whisky. Today Judge Robert Moran, 52, travels the five counties of Nebraska's 16th judicial district in a battered 1972 Plymouth with 140,000 miles on it (his 1960 model died at 240,000). His tools are two loose-leaf binders with summaries of his case docket and a black bag stuffed with lawyer's briefs. His territory is his state's western panhandle. It is sparse ranch and farm...
...changed a great deal, and Moran's district court is the court of original jurisdiction for most serious criminal and civil cases. Just keeping abreast of the law means that Moran constantly reads as his driver, court reporter and general assistant, Mike Benitez, 22, ferries him from county to county, some 1,700 miles a month. In only a few days, in three different courts, Moran will change some child visitation rights, grant half a dozen divorces, hear pretrial motions on a first-degree murder charge, listen to motions on a complex home-construction case, sentence a drunken driver...