About Elizabeth Monkus

Elizabeth Monkus (she/her) is the Senior Attorney & Project Director for Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts. Elizabeth came to Chicago Appleseed in 2010 to manage the Judicial Performance Commission Demonstration project. She currently focuses on domestic relations and judicial elections in her program work.

CCL & Chicago Appleseed in the News on Judicial Elections

WGN, the Chicago Tribune and Medill Watchdog have begun a series of investigations into the judicial elections process. The integrity of the judicial elections process is an important research concern at Chicago Appleseed, as is the overall quality of our judiciary and the investigators spoke to our...

Collaboration for Justice: Chicago Appleseed and the Chicago Council of Lawyers

Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice began in 1970 as the Fund for Justice, a nonprofit research group, dedicated to finding solutions for inadequacies in the legal system. In 1997, the Fund for Justice joined the National Appleseed network to become the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice. Since then,...

Help Where it is Needed

Chicago Appleseed, with pro bono assistance from attorneys at Skadden Arps, has been evaluating recent changes to the parentage court. We’ve met with practitioners, court-personnel and legal aid attorneys familiar with the parentage court before and after it moved into the Daley Center, as well as b...

Filling Judicial Vacancies

The Chicago Tribune has reported that Justice Freeman of the Illinois Supreme Court has appointed his long-time law clerk, Jean Cocozza, to a vacancy in the Circuit Court. The Tribune reports that Judge Cocozza has no courtroom experience and that she was not evaluated for judicial service by any in...

Proposals to Reform the Judicial Retention Process

Two bills recently introduced into the Illinois state legislature have caught our attention. Representative Kelly Cassidy has sponsored HJRCA0010, a proposal to amend the Illinois constitution and create a judicial performance commission for the evaluation of judicial retention candidates. Rep. C...
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