The Illinois Supreme Court has announced that Cook County Circuit Judge LeRoy K. Martin, Jr. has been assigned as an Appellate Court Justice in the First District.

Justice Robert L. Carter of the 3rd District Appellate Court has been selected to join the Illinois Supreme Court next month, pending the Illinois State Board of Elections proclaiming the results of the November 3 election.  The appointment of Justice Carter is effective December 8, 2020, and terminates December 5, 2022, when the seat will be filled by the November 2022 General Election. The Supreme Court has constitutional authority to fill all judicial vacancies.

Join us from noon until 1:45 p.m. on Thursday, November 19 for "Deciphering the Federal Guidelines on the Paycheck Protection Program: What Every Attorney Should Know about Eligibility, Investigation, and Forgiveness."

In their November Illinois Bar Journal article, “A Palpable Conflict,” Anthony J. Longo and John M. Fitzgerald pit two ancient doctrines against each other: the law of the case vs. subject-matter jurisdiction. What happens, Longo and Fitzgerald ask, when subject-matter jurisdiction and the law-of-the-case doctrine clash? In other words, does the law-of-the-case doctrine really bar someone from relitigating the court’s subject-matter jurisdiction in a subsequent appeal? The authors, in their article, “A Palpable Conflict,” show that there is a split of authority on this issue. While the majority of reported Illinois decisions on this issue have held that the law-of-the-case doctrine indeed bars relitigating a court’s subject-matter jurisdiction, a minority of cases have found (or at least strongly suggest) that defects in subject-matter jurisdiction can indeed be raised at any time—including after the appellate court has already ruled that it does possess subject-matter jurisdiction.