1. The General Assembly has been working on the budget lately. The House is proposing significant budget cuts to the court system, including reductions in the number of victim/witness legal assistants, reductions to indigent defense, and reductions to the Administrative Office of the Courts, including the elimination of trial court administrators. That last bit is the subject of this News and Observer opinion piece, which argues for the importance of professional court managers. 2. The legislature has had time to take up a few other matters of interest. The News and Observer reports here that "A group of Republican legislators is backing a measure that would make it illegal for judges to consider 'foreign law' when making rulings in North Carolina's courts." And here the newspaper discusses a push by the North Carolina Bar Association to change the way that judges are selected to a hybrid appointment/election system. The article notes in unusually blunt language that "[p]roposals for changing how judges are selected are common in the legislature, but they don't go anywhere." 3. A number of interesting court opinions have cropped up across the country lately. The Seventh Circuit has weighed in again on GPS tracking, as discussed here. (Short summary: it's not a search.) Meanwhile, a couple of state courts were busy issuing opinions that I found startling. The New Mexico Court of Appeals found a reasonable expectation of privacy in garbage placed in a dumpster behind a motel, while the Alaska Supreme Court said that police officers who [...]
Faculty Coordinators
