Latest News - Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts

Merit Selection and Judicial Elections

With oral arguments in Williams-Yulee before the Supreme Court earlier this year, attention has once again focused on the impact of money in judicial campaigns. The question of how judges can remain impartial looms large when judges must stand for general election or receive a sufficient number of v...

The Search for Cook County’s New Public Defender

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has started a search process for the new Public Defender in Cook County. On March 31, 2015, Abishi Cunningham’s six-year term as Public Defender for Cook County will end. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has elected to replace Cunningham with...

Chicago Appleseed & Chicago Council of Lawyers Join in Amicus Brief

Chicago Appleseed and Chicago Council of Lawyers are signatories on an amicus brief submitted in Williams-Yulee vs. Florida Bar before the Supreme Court this term. We join 9 other state and local nonpartisan organizations committed to creating and maintaining an ethical judicial system and promoting...

End of Year Fundraising Campaign

We're very excited to announce that with 14 days left in our end of the year fundraising campaign, we have only $7,000 left to raise in order to meet our matching donor's goal! A generous anonymous donor has pledged to match all contributions to our end of the year fundraising campaign up to $40,00...

The Capacity Problem: What Cook County Can Do To Move Toward NYC’s Plan To Keep The Mentally Ill Out of Jail

The mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, recently unveiled a plan to reduce the number of mentally ill people kept in jail. The plan hopes to address a common and malignant feature of criminal justice systems throughout the country: that jails have been become--in many places--the only public hou...