Ohio lawyer group stirs anger wading into politics
Legal Careers News
The Ohio State Bar Association, the state's largest professional organization of lawyers, usually stays above the fray of election politics.
The group, which represents more than 26,000 lawyers and judges, generally keeps to such political activities as reviewing the qualifications of the latest batch of judicial candidates or urging decency when nasty political advertising maligns the legal profession.
But this year was different. For the first time in 25 years, the association waded into a politically heated ballot battle, this time over legislative and congressional redistricting. It had paid $236,000 to a political consultant and $5,000 to a research and communications firm as of late October, state filings showed.
The association's decision to urge opposition to Issue 2 outraged many members, sparking about 200 complaint emails and what amounted to protest votes by some local bar associations.
Critics tie the unusual move in part to the fact OSBA's new president, Hamilton County Appellate Judge Patrick F. Fischer, is also an active politician.
Fischer, a Harvard Law School graduate from Cincinnati, successfully ran for re-election this fall, on the same ballot with the redistricting measure. He also applied Friday for the Ohio Supreme Court seat being vacated by Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton.
That vacancy will be filled by Republican Gov. John Kasich, whose party currently controls the map-making process that Issue 2 sought to overhaul.
Related listings
-
German court sends ECB challenge to European court
Legal Careers News 08/23/2017Germany's top court has declined to hear a series of challenges to the European Central Bank's bond-buying stimulus program, referring them instead to the European Court of Justice.The dpa news agency reports Tuesday that those against the program cl...
-
Texas Executes TaiChin Preyor, Who Said Lawyer Used Wikipedia
Legal Careers News 07/20/2017The state of Texas executed TaiChin Preyor on Thursday night after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a last-minute appeal. Preyor, 46, was put to death by lethal injection at a state corrections unit in Huntsville in the fatal stabbing of Jami T...
-
Joseph Wapner, star of 'The People's Court,' dead at 97
Legal Careers News 02/24/2017Joseph Wapner, the retired Los Angeles judge who presided over "The People's Court" with steady force during the heyday of the reality courtroom show, died Sunday at age 97. Son David Wapner told The Associated Press that his father died at home in h...
USCIS to Begin Accepting Applications under the International Entrepreneur Rule
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today it is taking steps to implement the International Entrepreneur Rule (IER), in accordance with a recent court decision.
Although the IER was published during the previous administration with an effective date of July 17, 2017, it did not take effect because the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a final rule on July 11, 2017, delaying the IER’s effective date until March 14, 2018. This delay rule was meant to give USCIS time to review the IER and, if necessary, to issue a rule proposing to remove the IER program regulations.
However, a Dec. 1, 2017, ruling from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in National Venture Capital Association v. Duke vacated USCIS’ final rule to delay the effective date. The Dec. 1, 2017, court decision is a result of litigation filed in district court on Sept. 19, 2017, which challenged the delay rule.