Online Guide to Health Care POAs, Living Wills
Looking for a short and simple yet accurate guide to Illinois law about advance care directives? Something you can share with clients to help them better understand their options, written from a lawyer's perspective?
Visit the ISBA Web site <www.isba.org>, where you'll find a front-page link to Your Health Care: In Illinois, Who Decides? This public information pamphlet, prepared by the ISBA Health Care Section Council, tells clients how they can help assure that their wishes about whether or not to forgo life-sustaining treatment are carried out.
Among other topics, the pamphlet discusses the important differences between a power of attorney for health care and a living will (e.g., a POA allows withdrawal of nutrition and hydration, a living will does not). It also describes what happens when you die without a POA or living will (e.g., the Health Care Surrogate Act may kick in, putting your spouse ahead of your parents on the list of those authorized to make life-and-death decisions for you).
The online pamphlet includes links to POA, living will, and other forms on the Illinois Department of Public Health's Web site. You can also order print versions of the pamphlet at the online ISBA Bookstore <https://secure.isba.org/bookstore> or by calling 800/252-8908.
Director of Legislative Affairs
The General Assembly continues to process legislation with a targeted adjournment date of May 27. Some of the bills still moving are as follows.
Change of name publication. House Bill 2920 (Mitchell, R-Sterling) amends the notice of publication statute for a change of name petition. Notice now must be inserted for three consecutive weeks after filing of the petition with the first publication to be at least six weeks before the return day upon which the petition is to be heard (instead of filed). It is on second reading in the House.
Appointment of guardian. House Bill 3415 (Eddy, R-Hutsonville) gives the courts flexibility in the appointment of guardians for minors and disabled adults. Under current law any felony conviction disqualifies a person from serving as guardian. House Bill 3415 allows the court to appoint a person convicted of a felony if the court finds it is in the best interests of the minor or ward.
As part of that best interests determination, the court must consider the nature o the offense, the date of the offense, and the evidence of the proposed guardian's rehabilitation. It prohibits any consideration if the proposed guardian has been convicted of a felony involving harm or threat to a child, including a felony sex offense or any offense involving harm or threat to a elderly or disabled person. It is on second reading in the House.
Open Meetings Act I. House Bill 1038 (Flider, D-Mt. Zion) amends the Open Meetings Act to do the following: (1) Defines "meeting" to include any gathering, whether in person or by video or audio conference, telephone call, electronic means (such as, without limitation, electronic mail, electronic chat, and instant messaging), or other means of interactive communication of a majority of a quorum of the members. (2) Requires a quorum of members of a public body to be physically present at the location of the open meeting. Other members who are not physically present at the open meeting may participate in the meeting and vote on all matters, if they are voting members, by means of a video or audio conference.
(4) Specifies the conditions under which a public body member who is not necessary for a quorum may attend a meeting by other than physical presence and permits public bodies to adopt additional provisions by rule. It authorizes a majority of the public body to allow a member to attend the meeting by video or audio conference if the member is prevented from physically attending because of (a) personal illness or disability; (b) employment purposes or the business of the public body; or (c) a family or other emergency. It is on second reading in the House.
Human Rights Act I. House Bill 4051 (Currie, D-Chicago; Hamos, D-Chicago) would give litigants an opportunity to opt-out to circuit court for employment and other civil rights violations one year after a charge has been filed with the Department. It is on second reading in the House.
Human Rights Act II. House Bill 1000 (Fritchey, D-Chicago) Amends the Public Accommodations Article of the Illinois Human Rights Act to expand the definition of "place of public accommodation" to include a new list of facilities that are considered public accommodations for purposes of the Article. This would include law firms. It also provides that it is a civil rights violation to deny or refuse full and equal enjoyment of goods of any place of public accommodation. It is on second reading in the House.
"A recent poll of Illinois voters showed a widespread belief (about 85 percent) that campaign contributors, political party leaders and special interest groups influence the decisions of judges in Illinois ... nearly 73 percent of those polled prefer an election system over an appointment process ...however, 59 percent also believe that judicial campaigns should be conducted differently than campaigns for the state legislature."
From a statewide survey of 747 registered voters on judicial selection issues commissioned by the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform and the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at SIU
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"I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country ... And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up ... to the point where some people engage in ... violence. Certainly without any justification, but a concern that I have."
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) in a Senate floor speech, criticizing the U.S. Supreme Court's decision invalidating death sentences for juveniles in a Texas case
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"Unfortunately, the demands on citizens' lives may be a complicating factor in discouraging people from jury service in ways that could not have been anticipated. In an age of mass media, celebrity justice, hectic professional and personal schedules, and new, complex legal issues, Americans want their privacy, their time and their intelligence respected. We in the legal profession owe it to our fellow citizens to modernize the institution of jury trials so that our legal system will continue to be responsive to the demands of the 21st century."
ABA president Robert J. Grey, Jr., on the American Jury Project principles adopted by the ABA House in February
Editor
Shadows of doubt
Beyond ANY doubt, there is at least one typographical error in this issue of the Bar News. No effective erratacide has yet been created for type lice.
Beyond MUCH doubt, the governor extricated the judicial subcircuit bill from the pile on his desk, soon after he learned it was sponsored by the Speaker of the House.
Beyond SOME doubt, a few more than the 18 prisoners freed from Death Row since 1977 (out of the 289 who were incarcerated there) may have been innocent.
Each of those three hypotheses could be considered beyond reasonable doubt, but none is beyond ALL doubt. Whereas "all doubt" is clear prima facie, "reasonable doubt" is as murky as its convoluted definition in Black's Law Dictionary, to wit:
"A 'reasonable doubt' is such a doubt as would cause a reasonable and prudent man in the graver and more important affairs of life to pause and hesitate to act upon the truth of the matter charged. But a reasonable doubt is not a mere possibility of innocence, nor a caprice, shadow or speculation as to the innocence not arising out of the evidence or the want of it."
That's a daunting threshold for an agglomeration of lay jurors. Hearsay once served on a jury that pondered into a third day the precise meaning of "willful and wanton" in a $4,500 damage case. "Read the instructions," the judge responded to our futile hopes of finding facts.
If the Law Day theme of "The American Jury: We the People in Action" is to garner more than commemorative homilies, and to earn more respect for and from those who are called to duty on venires, the legalese must be reduced to plainer talk.
The ABA's American Jury Project is promulgating a litany of Principles Relating to Juries and Jury Trials that President Robert Grey hopes in time will be able to convince every juror that "We are going to make sure you get respect."
Primary principles of the project include the vigorous promotion of juror understanding of the facts and the law, permission to take notes during trials, and freedom to submit questions that no judge may answer with "read the instructions."
Here in Illinois, House Bill 2704 would qualify "reasonable doubt" in first-degree murder verdicts for application of death sentences. The original version, introduced by Rep. Tom Cross, opted for life imprisonment when the evidence "does not foreclose all doubt respecting a defendant's guilt..."
This language was amended to a more concise requirement that a unanimous jury must find "that the evidence leaves no doubt respecting the defendant's guilt" for a death sentence to be appropriate. That version passed the House on March 16 by a 66-49 margin and was referred to the Senate Rules Committee.
Whether the sentencing standard is to become "all doubt" or "no doubt," the goal is to be absolutely certain that a defendant has committed a capital crime before he or she is doomed irreversibly to be executed for it. No astute legislator should harbor any reasonable doubt about that.
Legal problem? Call your doctor
Iowa Bar President Nicholas Critelli addressed the ISBA Assembly in December on the subject of the image of lawyers in a skeptical, if not cynical, society. He spoke of his association's image program that stresses the professional training of lawyers and the historic contributions of the legal profession.
Critelli recommended that lawyers honor their juris doctorates with the prominence they deserve - possibly an appropriate theme for a Law Day presentation. An attorney with a J.D. is entitled to the honorific, Doctor of Jurisprudence, and the right to be proud of it.
Hearsay broached this in July 1999, when past president Cheryl Niro raised the issue during an ethics lecture at the NIU College of Law. Lawyers are healers, said Niro, who used that theme often during her term. Meet the challenge of mending "tears in the social fabric" by applying genius to the preservation of order in a body politic that shows symptoms of fracture.
The Iowa bar president's postulate, and the Assembly's subsequent allocation of funding for development of an image campaign, come as palliatives to some forecast plagues of irrelevance and obsolescence.
Florida futurist Charlie Robinson, keynoter for the ISBA Conference on the Future of the Profession a day earlier, had warned that the practicing attorney one day might become the best there is at a skill that society thinks it no longer needs.