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Association in the News
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[The U.S. Department of Justice] accuses lawyers of provoking unrest among the detainees and threatening camp security.Barry M. Kamins, the bar group’s president, deemed it an unjust insult that could not be taken lying down. His is one of the oldest and largest associations of lawyers in the country, with more than 23,000 members...
"Guantanamo has developed into a symbol of abuse, mistreatment and injustice in the eyes of the entire world," Mr. Kamins said. "The practices tolerated there have done incalculable damage to the reputation of the United States as an advocate of fundamental justice and the rule of law."
The New York Times
May 11, 2007
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Our strongly held view is that the best way to select justices–and all judges–is through a commission–based appointment system. We believe this provides the highest–quality judiciary. We recognize that this change would require a constitutional amendment, and at least in the interim the court decision must be addressed. We would much prefer a reformed judicial convention system to open primaries, which have the worst fund–raising implications.
Barry Kamins, President
New York City Bar Association
Crain's New York Business
January 22, 2007
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Barry Kamins is New York’s latest legatee and legend...The fact that he’s become the 62nd president of a prestigious organization whose members include 23,000 of the city’s 75,000 lawyers isn’t what’s made him a legend. Rather, it’s the fact that in the 136–year history of the bar association — the largest of any city in America — there has never been a president from outside Manhattan until Mr. Kamins came along...
The New York Sun
July 12, 2006
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Last month, the New York City Bar published a policy paper stating that sex offender civil commitment laws could easily be abused and that "misplaced fears" could keep sex offenders incarcerated for years after their sentence and could represent a threat to civil liberties.
The New York Times
February 6, 2006
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Last
week’s Federal Court ruling, which
struck down as unconstitutional New York’s
decades-old system of electing state Supreme
Court justices, marked the culmination of more
than a century of calls to break the stranglehold
of party bosses over our state courts. Reformers
should take a well-deserved bow – and
then start running for office.There may never
be a better chance than right now to put a
crop of honest, independent men and women on
the bench. Federal Judge John Gleeson has ordered
open party primaries for Supreme Court, the
state’s general trial
court. Gleeson also abolished judicial conventions,
which were nothing more than rubber stamps
on the patronage picks of county bosses …
For New York, that’s revolutionary. In 1847, our state became the second
(after Mississippi) to choose judges by popular vote – but the elections
quickly became bogged down in political corruption. By 1870, according to a history
of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, “the decline of
quality on the bench under the elective system and the necessity for reversing
this trend had been among the chief reasons for founding the Association.”
Daily News
January 31, 2006
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For the first time in many years, the New
York City Bar Association looks ahead to the
2006 legislative session with optimism, albeit
a cautious one. From Assembly rules reform,
to budget, public authorities and lobbying
reform in 2005, change toward a better government
is a real possibility … Whether this
is a sign of a new Albany where productivity
and reform rule the day, or just a lucky break
fueled by last year’s intense public
pressure to fix Albany, remains to be seen
[said Jayne Bigelsen, director of Communications
and Public Affairs at the New York City Bar
Association].
New York Law Journal
January 9, 2006
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The City Bar Justice Center received the Distinguished
Public Service Award from the American Immigration
Law Foundation at the group’s Annual
Achievement Awards Ceremony at the Marriott
Marquis on Thursday.
New York Law Journal
December 14, 2005
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Thirty of the 55 large Manhattan law firms
asked by the New York City Bar Association
to endorse its aspirational “Statement
of Pro Bono Principles” did so yesterday.
Included in the statement is a pledge that
signatory firms perform 50 or more hours per
lawyer per year. A “substantial majority” of
those hours should be in the cause of civil
legal help for the poor – or about 30
hours, said Bettina B. Plevan, city bar president.
New York Law Journal
November 30, 2005
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Fresh from his big win on Tuesday, Mayor Bloomberg
is launching a new push aimed at changing the
way the city elects most judges – a secretive
process largely controlled by party bosses
and long riddled by scandal … It’s
not the first time Bloomberg has called for
changing the city’s arcane method of
electing judges. He first did so in May 2003
in a speech before the Association of the Bar
of the City of New York, and more recently
during his campaign.
Daily News
November 13, 2005
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As Scott Horton [Chair, International Law
Committee, New York City Bar Association] reminded
us on Amy Goodman’s syndicated program, Democracy
Now!, the vice president, back in 2002, “was
making the rounds of the talk shows and talking
about the need to use ‘the dark arts.’ He
was clearly advocating torture, and he was
advocating it within the CIA and later the
Defense Department.”
Nat Hentoff
The Village Voice
November 11, 2005
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As the Brooklyn district attorney looks into
whether judges have paid to get seats on the
bench, nine judicial candidates in Brooklyn
have been refused the coveted seal of approval
from the New York City Bar Association … The
bar association gives only “approved” and “not
approved” designations after candidates
submit questionnaires, writing samples, references,
and a full record of their job history. In
addition, a special committee conducts interviews
with the would-be judges.
The New York Sun
November 1, 2005 |
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After 135 years, the Association of the Bar of
the City of New York is sprucing up its public
identity to make it more contemporary and less
prone to mangling in the popular press. [Some
of the most common misidentifications were as “The
New York State Bar” or the “New York
Bar.”]
Though it will retain its formal name, the association started in June to identify
itself in its public communications as the “New York City Bar,” said
Barbara Berger Opotowsky, executive director of the 23,000-member group …
Also, Ms. Opotowsky said,
the city bar’s public name has been changed in
tandem with that of its fund-raising arm, the City Bar Fund, [now known as the
City Bar Justice Center] to cement the connection between the two organizations
in the public’s mind.
New York Law Journal
September 23, 2005 |
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When friends and colleagues gathered three years
ago at a memorial service for Cyrus R. Vance … cabinet
secretary under three U.S. presidents … it
seemed logical to all that he should become the
namesake of one of the most ambitious and far-reaching
agendas ever undertaken by the Association of
the Bar of the City of New York … the Cyrus
R. Vance Center for International Justice – an
opportunity for button-down New York lawyers at
white shoe firms to engage in social justice and
help promote legal reform in emerging democracies.
New York Law Journal
August 12, 2005 |
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A provision of the USA Patriot Act that allows
the FBI to collect personal information from institutions
without a warrant is unconstitutional, the New
York City Bar said yesterday in an amicus brief
filed in the Manhattan U.S. Court of Appeals.
The association says “National Security
Letters” that demand customer information
from Internet providers, universities and libraries
for terror investigations lack proper judicial
oversight.
amNewYork
August 5, 2005 |
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At the Legal Referral Service run by the Association
of the Bar of the City of New York, director Allen
Charne says he and his staff get 500 phone calls
a day from people looking for a lawyer … His
staff screens each lawyer before adding the lawyer
to its referral list for a given legal specialty.
Charne requires lawyers to submit proof of experience
in their areas of law, submit work samples and
be questioned by a panel of judges and lawyers.
Once his staff approves a lawyer for the referral
panel, they check the lawyer’s legal standing
annually and ask each referred client to complete
a satisfaction survey.
New York Magazine
August 1, 2005 |
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A major statistical report profiling the demographics
of the metropolitan legal community will be presented
to 82 participating firms on Monday during the
second annual diversity symposium of the Association
of the Bar of the City of New York … That
so many New York law firms were signatories to
the city bar study – 82 of 86 invited to
participate – was evidence of a commitment
to dramatic change, according to Edwin Bowman,
diversity manager at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.
The 82 law firms employed 16,936 attorneys in
2004. “I’ve never seen a survey with
that high a response rate,” said Mr. Bowman. “People
are interested and taking it seriously, and they
want to be a part of anything that seems productive
and constructive.”
New York Law Journal
June 3, 2005 |
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On September 17, 1987, I was privileged to
be in the audience at the Association of the
Bar of the City of New York when Justice William
Brennan, who had become the conscience of the
Bill of Rights on the high court, gave the
42nd Annual Benjamin N. Cardozo Lecture.
That lecture, still available in the archives
of the Association of the Bar of this city,
should be read by members of Congress and every
law student and law professor in the country—as
well as by every judge, from local housing
and family courts to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Titled “Reason, Passion, and ‘The
Progress of the Law,’ ” Brennan’s
emphasis on what he called “the human
reality of the judicial process” is even
more vital now that the Rehnquist Supreme Court
has prioritized economic rights and the rights
of individual states over the rights and liberties
of individual Americans throughout the country.
Nat Hentoff
The Village Voice
May 11, 2005
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Several
groups, including the Association of the Bar
of the City of New York …, have written
to Mr. Putin and the Russian prosecutor general’s
office demanding that Ms. Bakhmina [a corporate
attorney for the Russian oil company, Yukos]
be released and put under house arrest. “It
wasn’t only denial of due process” that
prompted the New York City bar association to
write on her behalf, said Martin S. Flaherty,
chairman of the group’s committee on international
human rights and a professor at Fordham Law School,
in a telephone interview. “We understand
she was also denied medical treatment and roughed
up in prison.”
The New York Times
March 29, 2005 |
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Eight senior officers from the Office of
the Judge Advocate General – the highest military
legal authority – sounded an alarm in 2003
in a series of secret meetings with the New York
City Bar Association. The career military lawyers
complained that the Pentagon had sidelined them
because they supported Geneva Convention protections
for American prisoners. Retired Rear Adm. John
Hutson, judge advocate general from 1997-2000,
blames the decision to ignore the Geneva Conventions
for “the kind of chaos we’ve seen.”
Newsday
January 13, 2005 |
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As a result of New York’s obsolete divorce
law, families suffer, children are permanently
scarred, and abusive marriages are encouraged … Fortunately,
the city and state bar associations are backing
legislation in Albany to change to a no-fault
model. While New York State legislators are mostly
known for what they do not do – get a state
budget passed, control Medicaid costs, work across
party lines – now they have an opportunity
to agree on helping couples disagree, and divorce,
with dignity.
New York Observer
December 13, 2004 |
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Matrimonial lawyers, bar associations and judges
are pushing to have the [divorce] law changed,
saying it is archaic and heightens hostilities
between spouses, which particularly hurts children.
Both the New York State Bar Association and the
city bar are backing a legislative change in
Albany to add no-fault grounds, and several powerful
legislators appear to be receptive. “Even
Chile, one of the most Catholic countries in
the world, has no-fault divorce now,” said
Harold A. Mayerson, a Manhattan divorce lawyer
and chairman of the committee on matrimonial
law at the Association of the Bar of the City
of New York.
The New York Times
November 30, 2004 |
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Many legal immigrants take plea settlements without
realizing accepting certain sentences for even
seemingly minor crimes could get them deported … The
Association of the Bar of the City of New York
criticized the law in a report last spring. “Without
a warning, many non-citizen defendants plead
guilty to lesser New York offenses unaware
of these potential immigration consequences,” the
report found … “The interests
of justice require a warning mechanism that
puts the non-citizen defendant on notice, so
that he may make an informed choice as to whether,
and to what, to plead guilty.”
The New York Sun
November 16, 2004
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The New York Bar Association, in a statement,
said current U.S. regulations enacted under
the Convention Against Torture prohibit deporting
any individual to a country where “more
likely than not” the person will be tortured.
A person can be deported only after a finding
that torture is no longer likely. By contrast,
the bar association said, the new bill would
actually “mandate deportation of such
an individual to a country even if it is certain
that [he] would be tortured there.” The
provision amounts to “a tacit approval
of torture,” the New York Bar Association
said, and “is particularly shocking
in the aftermath of the recent revelations
of torture by U.S. personnel in Iraq.”
Newsweek
October 6, 2004
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In 2003, Rumsfeld’s apparent disregard
for the requirements of the Geneva Conventions
while carrying out the war on terror had led
a group of senior military legal officers from
the Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG)
to pay two surprise visits within five months
to Scott Horton, who was then chairman of the
New York City Bar Association’s Committee
on International Human Rights. “They wanted
us to challenge the Bush Administration about
its standards for detentions and interrogation,” Horton
told me…The message was that conditions
are ripe for abuse, and it’s going to occur…“They
said there was an atmosphere of legal ambiguity
being created as a result of a policy decision
at the highest levels in the Pentagon. The JAG
officers were being cut out of the policy formulation
process.”
The New Yorker
May 24, 2004
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