4 p.m. - The Unauthorized Practice of Law, with John C. "Jack" Murray of First American Title Co., Chicago.
Central District to lower special admission fees
The special fee of $50 an attorney now pays for admission to practice in U.S. District Court for the Central District would be reduced to $35, according to a proposed revision of Local Rule 83.5(E).
The full text may be accessed at the Web site, www.ilcd.uscourts.gov, or obtained from district court clerk's offices in Peoria, Urbana, Springfield and Rock Island.
Written comments on the proposal may be submitted by Jan. 1 to court clerk John M. Waters, U.S. District Court, 600 E. Monroe, Springfield, Ill. 62701.
Two ISBA committees Women and the Law and Women and Minority Participation are among sponsors of a joint reception, "Celebrating the Spirit of the Season," that will take place from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 16.
Located in the offices of the Chicago Bar Association and Women's Bar Association of Illinois, the event is also sponsored by the CBA Alliance for Women, the WBAI, and the Black Women Lawyers Association of Greater Chicago.
Responses are requested by Dec. 12 to Jill P. O'Brien of the ISBA Committee on Women and the Law at jobrien@lanermuchin.com.
Workplace situations aired on cable shows
Two ISBA cable television programs on legal issues faced in the employment environment will be broadcast at 10 p.m. Tuesdays during December on Chicago Access Network channel 21.
"Rights and Responsibilities in the Workplace" may be seen Dec. 7 and Dec. 21. "Discrimination in the Workplace" will air Dec. 14 and Dec. 28. Karen A. White of Downers Grove, who serves on the Special Committee on Cable TV Programming, is the moderator for both programs.
Panelists are Glenn R. Gaffney of Glendale Heights, chair of the Labor and Employment Law Section Council, council member Alan M. Kaplan of Schaumburg, vice chair William J. Borah of Homewood and past chair Jill P. O'Brien of Chicago.
PILI lunch is Dec. 9
The Public Interest Law Initiative will present several awards during its annual luncheon on Thursday, Dec. 9, in the International Ballroom of the Fairmont Hotel, Chicago.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan will be the keynote speaker at the event, which begins with an 11:30 a.m. reception. Call (312) 832-5127.
ISBA leadership directory now online
For decades, ISBA has published a directory affectionately know as the ISBA Blue Book that lists Board of Governors and Assembly members, executive staff, section council and committee members, and other ISBA personnel, along with the association's bylaws, election policies and procedures and related documents.
Because of the high cost of producing and mailing copies of the print version of the ISBA Blue Book, it wasn't widely distributed beyond the list of active volunteers whose names appear there. But now for the first time, it's easily accessible to every ISBA member via the ISBA Web site.
Whenever you need to contact, say, your Board of Governors representative or the chair of the Family Law Section Council, just go to <http://www. isba.org/bluebook/>, enter your last name and ISBA member number at the prompt, and click on the appropriate link to get the information you seek.
In addition to costing less to produce, the online ISBA Blue Book is updated monthly, not just annually. This means that the addresses and phone numbers listed there reflect all but the most recent changes.
To keep the ISBA Blue Book readily at hand, bookmark the URL listed above. Or simply look for the entry on the maroon left-hand navigation bar under "ISBA and You" at <www.isba.org>.
Director of Legislative Affairs
The General Assembly will meet for six days in mid-November to take action on bills that were vetoed or amendatorily vetoed by the Governor. The legislature may override a total veto or amendatory veto or may accept an amendatory veto. Amendatory vetoes are those in which the Governor amends the bill that is sent to him by the General Assembly.
There are few bills that were vetoed that are of interest to most of our membership, but it will be a lame-duck session and interesting things can happen. Some of vetoed bills include the following:
Child support and grown kids. Senate Bill 2690 (Crotty, D-Oak Forest; Lindner, R-Sugar Grove) authorizes orders for withholding to be extended past the majority of the child to collect arrearages if the obligor is more than 30 days behind on the date of majority. The Governor amendatorily vetoed it to change the effective date from July 1, 2004 to Jan. 1, 2005.
FOIA exemption. Senate Bill 1510 (Harmon, D-Oak Park; Currie, D-Chicago) amends the Freedom of Information Act to exempt from public disclosure under "trade secrets" certain venture capital and portfolio equity information. As sent to the Governor, it would exempt venture capital and private equity portfolio information of privately held companies possessed by a public body, including a public pension fund, for the purpose of investing and managing public funds. The Governor's amendatory veto clarified that this new exemption does not include aggregate financial performance information of a venture capital or private equity firm or fund possessed by a public body.
FOIA. House Bill 956 (Currie, D-Chicago; Cullerton, D-Chicago) amends the Freedom of Information Act to create a 60-day statute of limitation to appeal for judicial relief from the written denial of a FOIA request. The Governor vetoed it at the request of the Illinois Press Association and the Chicago Tribune. It is doubtful if the General Assembly will attempt to override this veto, which effectively kills the bill.
Rules and regulations. More and more of our clients and the public are affected by the promulgation of administrative rules by federal and Illinois executive agencies. Yet there is often little notice of them until they are in effect. In Illinois, however, you do have a quick way to monitor proposed rules. The Joint Committee on Administrative Rules' website allows anybody to view proposed rules and regulations, which may be found here. The Joint Committee on Administrative Rules (JCAR) is a bipartisan legislative oversight committee created by the General Assembly in 1977. Under the Illinois Administrative Procedure Act, it is authorized to conduct systematic reviews of administrative rules promulgated by state agencies. This review includes proposed, emergency, and peremptory rulemaking.
If you go to JCAR's website, the Flinn Report is a PDF document that summarizes proposed rules in a weekly newsletter from 4-8 pages. It then gives you the name and address of the official in the State agency to whom you may comment on a proposed rule.
Mobile home law. One of the last bills that the Governor signed into law this year was PA 93-1043, which amends the Mobile Home Landlord and Tenant Rights Act. It requires park owners to disclose in writing six different things with every lease or sale and upon renewal of a lease of a mobile home or lot in a mobile home park. This would include matters such as the park owner's responsibilities, information regarding late payments, and security deposits. Effective June 1, 2005.
"It's just a shame. There are lots of extremely well-qualified lawyers in Cook County and it's not necessary to have judges who, in the opinion of their peers, are not up to the job."
Northwestern Univ. law professor Steven Lubet after all 74 judicial retention candidates in Cook County, including some who failed bar evaluations, were retained
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"It's worked well. I think it's an appreciation for the work that the bar association members have done and also the fact that we want the best judiciary we can have resolving disputes that arise in our society."
Chief Judge Timothy E. Evans on the mentoring program he instituted in Cook County for judges who receive unfavorable ratings from a majority of the bar associations
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"I would look for justices who would interpret the Constitution, as Cardozo has said, reflecting the values of the people."
Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), who is in line to chair the Judiciary Committee in January,
warning that judicial nominees who are too
Editor
A life on the slopes
Cancer was the cause of the death and in many respects, the life of Cara Dunne-Yates. It was the only battle she could not win, though she repelled its relentless sieges for almost all of her 34 years.
Cara was only a year old when retinoblastoma struck, and by age 5 she could no longer see the world that was to challenge her. Although blindness was an impediment, it sharpened her wits and her will to clamber the slopes of her life.
She learned to ski from her stepfather, Chicago attorney Rich Zabelski, when she was 8, and she was named to the U.S. Disabled Ski Team at age 11. She won Paralympic skiing medals at Innsbruck in 1984 and in 1988, the year she was honored as one of Chicago's top 10 high school students.
By the time Cara graduated magna cum laude in 1992 from Harvard, where she was class president, she had won a drawerful of gold, silver and bronze medals in world class downhill skiing events. She also became fluent in Spanish and Japanese.
While training for the 1994 Paralympics, Cara was diagnosed with more cancer that claimed part of her throat and a cheekbone. To rebuild her stamina after surgery and chemotherapy, she began pedaling a stationary bicycle.
In short order, she entered law school at UCLA, joined the cycling team and started competing. Before earning her law degree in 1996, she made a thousand-mile bike trip across Siberia to promote sports for the disabled.
Cara qualified for the Paralympic cycling team and medalled in tandem events of the 1996 Atlanta games. It was there that she met sighted cyclist Spencer Yates, and they were married in 1998. After the 2000 Paralympics in Australia, they learned she had abdominal cancer.
For the past four years, her husband and two children gave Cara the strength to deal with the spreading disease, to speak to survivor groups, and to serve as co-president of the New England Retinoblastoma Family Foundation.
With the world at her fingertips
Cara Dunne-Yates, in due time, could have been a supreme court justice, or even U.S. Ambassador to Japan, if she had aspired to such an achievement.
But eight years as a lawyer, distracted by family diversions and physical adversity, did not allow for a distinguished future in the profession. Nonetheless, Cara leaves a significant legacy that thousands like her can use as a stepping stone to the greatness she deserved.
Law school admission was an uphill slope. The LSAT, an inquisition dreaded by the brightest sighted applicant, was not offered in Braille before 1991. The Law School Admissions Council was unmoved by appeals from Zabelski and Cara, then a junior at Harvard.
Her alternatives were to take the admission test orally, which she called "an unfair mechanism to judge abilities," or request a waiver, which she said was "a copout, not a solution." Either choice would red-flag the LSAC report to any law school.
But citing the Americans with Disabilities Act, still new in 1991, and enlisting Congressman Frank Annunzio, the duo persisted and prevailed. The council agreed for the first time to begin providing Braille materials in advance of an appropriate version of the LSAT.
All Cara ever wanted, Zabelski told a reporter, was "to prove she can perform" in any arena of competition. "She developed around her abilities and minimalized her disabilities."
Braille was a key that opened many doors. In a grade school Christmas pageant, it helped her play a part with more substance than a bleating sheep. In college, where she had access to a whole library of Braille volumes, she memorized the Japanese system.
Zabelski and Cara's mother Mary, an educator, counseled her not to walk away from the LSAT problem. She didn't, and justice was Dunne, so to speak. The victory was hers to share with countless others whose vision is locked in dreams.
Living, not lamenting, her future
"Who am I?" Cara Dunne-Yates tried to answer that in 300 words for a scholars program two years ago at Brandeis University. "As my world shifts and changes in drastic and unpredictable ways, I often find myself pondering this question with amusement, anxiety and sometimes frustration."
Briefly, she listed "mother, bioethicist, Japan scholar, athlete, cancer warrior and disability advocate: Many hats to wear and many chapters in a journal" she had yet to write.
Cara said her foundation work with similar individuals and families "helped me to understand why God blessed me with the challenges that I have: Life would be meaningless without the friends who have surrounded and supported me."
It can be said that her extraordinary life, which was lived entirely in its future, truly defines the word "meaningful."
Popejoy's 18th Circuit election opens associate seat for Austin
Kenneth Popejoy will step down as an 18th Circuit associate judge on Monday, Dec. 6, but only for the few seconds it takes him to fill the full circuit court position to which he was elected Nov. 2.