American Bar Association

Florida Bar will focus on ‘protecting the courts’ during constitutional revision process

Published on July 5, 2017 in Statewide/Top Headlines by Jim Rosica

The new president of The Florida Bar says the organization is standing by to offer “technical legal” support to the Constitution Revision Commission as it readies to amend the state’s governing document, which could include changes affecting the judicial branch. But Michael J. Higer, a partner in Berger Singerman’s Miami office, won’t say which public proposals already filed he favors—or fears. He assumed the Bar presidency on June 23. “It is too early in the process to focus on any…

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Martin Dyckman: Florida needs answers on death penalty discretion

Published on April 30, 2017 in Statewide/Top Headlines by Martin Dyckman

The courtroom at the Florida Supreme Court seats 164, which may not be enough for all the attorneys, organizations and individuals who have intervened in the unprecedented case of Aramis Ayala v. Rick Scott. Six groups have weighed in as friends of the court on behalf of Ayala, the state attorney for Orange and Seminole counties who is fighting to regain the 23 murder cases that the governor assigned to another prosecutor after she said she would not seek the…

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Darryl Paulson: On Neil Gorsuch; both parties should just grow up!

Published on March 29, 2017 in 2017/Top Headlines by Darryl Paulson

Until 1987, presidential nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court were respectfully received and reviewed by the U.S. Senate. In 1986, Antonin Scalia, a judicial conservative and constitutional originalist, was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to a vacancy on the court. He was confirmed 98 to 0 by the U.S. Senate. The confirmation process imploded in 1987 when another Reagan nominee to the court, Robert Bork, was subject to such a vicious attack concerning his record and judicial temperament, that the…

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Miami attorney to become head of ABA

Published on August 9, 2016 in Apolitical by Jim Rosica

A Miami attorney with the Greenberg Traurig law firm has become president-elect of the American Bar Association, the firm announced Tuesday. Hilarie Bass, co-president of the firm, will assume the presidency next August. She is perhaps best known for leading the effort “to eliminate Florida’s 20-year-old ban on gay adoption, which was found unconstitutional in 2010 and led to the state removing questions on sexual orientation from the adoption application,” according to a news release. “Giving back to the profession that has given so…

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Antonin Scalia, Sandy D’Alemberte and the pack of Marlboros

Published on February 13, 2016 in Statewide/Top Headlines by Jim Rosica

About a quarter-century ago, a pack of Marlboro cigarettes sealed a friendship between the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Florida legal legend Talbot “Sandy” D’Alemberte. It was December 1991, during D’Alemberte’s tenure as American Bar Association president. Scalia had been on the bench about five years by then. The two men were on an ABA “mission to Moscow” in the middle of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, D’Alemberte recalled Saturday night after news spread about Scalia’s death at 79. The…

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Ruling puts fate of Florida death row inmates in question

Published on January 13, 2016 in Statewide/Top Headlines by Associated Press

Convicted killer Michael Lambrix is scheduled to be executed Feb. 11, one of 390 Florida death row inmates whose fate is now in question after the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the state’s method of imposing death sentences. Attorney William Hennis said Wednesday he will seek a new sentencing hearing for Lambrix, who was condemned to die in 1984 for the killings of two people he met at a bar and invited home for a spaghetti dinner. Now the Florida…

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Martin Dyckman: Will U.S. Supreme Court rule Florida’s death penalty unconstitutional?

Published on March 13, 2015 in Statewide/Top Headlines by Martin Dyckman

For 13 years, Florida’s death penalty process has been on thin ice at the U.S. Supreme Court. The Legislature has pretended not to notice even though the state Supreme Court sent an early warning. Now, the ice is cracking. On Monday, the high court agreed to consider whether Florida’s law conflicts with its 2002 opinion in Ring v. Arizona that the jury, not the judge, must determine the existence of aggravating factors to support a death penalty. Florida law leaves…

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