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1 week ago | 
courthousenews.com | Bill Girdner
Kansas Chief Justice Marla Luckert has moved quickly and decisively to bring back prompt access to new court pleadings, a longtime tradition in the courts of America. In a powerful example of how state courts can improve public access, the courts of Kansas opened a public website Thursday that allows press and public to see new court pleadings as they come across the virtual counter.
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2 weeks ago | 
courthousenews.com | Bill Girdner
Moments of enlightenment come at odd times, like when waiting for a burger and fries at a Jack in the Box in southern Oregon. The manager was local, young and happy to talk. I told him back in college days I had worked in the woods setting chokers, gizmos made of a bell and knob that hung from a cable allowing an engine to pull enormous logs down the mountain. Looking back on it, those logs, some of them 14 feet in diameter, were from sequoias and redwoods that had to be hundreds of years old.
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1 month ago | 
courthousenews.com | Bill Girdner
A judge in Los Angeles Superior, the biggest court in the nation, made a comment to me after a committee hearing a long time ago that I can only paraphrase: Progress in technology should not take press access backwards. She put it so crisply that I have tried to remember it over time. It was close to that. The court where she worked is a great example of the problem and the promise inherent in electronic record keeping.
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1 month ago | 
editorandpublisher.com | Bill Girdner
Posted Wednesday, March 12, 2025 10:23 am In a long-awaited opinion, the Second Circuit ruled in favor of media groups in Vermont that challenged a local policy of withholding access to new cases as they came into the courthouse.
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1 month ago | 
courthousenews.com | Bill Girdner
The panel upheld a finding by U.S. District Judge Christina Reiss that "timely access to documents allows the public to understand the activity of the court system, increases accountability and keeps people informed of matters of public concern.” (CN) — In a long awaited opinion, the Second Circuit ruled in favor of media groups in Vermont that challenged a local policy withholding access to new cases as they came into the courthouse.
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1 month ago | 
courthousenews.com | Bill Girdner
I sent a text to a friend when last week’s tariffs went into effect: “As far as hammering American businesses that offshored their jobs, I’m OK with that.”There remains something visceral in the experience of workers — like those at a San Diego defense contractor where my nephew worked — who were given a choice between dismissal or training counterparts who were taking their jobs to Mexico.
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1 month ago | 
editorandpublisher.com | Bill Girdner
In a pitched legal battle between the American media and the Virginia commonwealth, the press on Tuesday accused the commonwealth of attempting to deceive the Fourth Circuit about First Amendment law and basic facts. The points of deception involve the nitty gritty of argument over Virginia’s policy giving remote records access to a favored few while cutting out the press and public. In the polite language of appellate argument, lawyers for the media blasted the commonwealth for its falsehoods.
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1 month ago | 
courthousenews.com | Bill Girdner
In a pitched legal battle between the American media and the Virginia commonwealth, the press on Tuesday accused the commonwealth of attempting to deceive the Fourth Circuit about First Amendment law and basic facts in a case over discriminatory access. The points of deception involve the nitty gritty of argument over Virginia’s policy giving remote records access to a favored few while cutting out the press and public.
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1 month ago | 
courthousenews.com | Bill Girdner
Op-Ed March 4, 2025Underneath the daily sturm und drang in the brief life of the new administration, tectonic plates in an old alliance are shifting. And as the old world reveals its democratic core, the new world is losing it. Our family has a distant connection to Germany and over time I have followed its politics with interest.
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1 month ago | 
courthousenews.com | Bill Girdner
Op-Ed February 25, 2025“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going.” That’s good stuff, strong and dark, from Ecclesiastes. Our family lived in West Africa for two years when I was a teenager. One of my friends worked for USAID helping to build a small palm oil factory for local villagers.
