News & Events
Alabama Immigrant Law Blocked
October 14, 2011
A federal appeals court in Atlanta temporarily blocked two provisions of Alabama’s far-reaching immigration enforcement law on Friday, but left much of it in effect as the state and the United States Justice Department continued to fight over the law in the courts.
The United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit issued a preliminary injunction against a section of the law that requires schools to determine the immigration status of children who are enrolling, as well as the status of their parents. It also blocked a section making it a state crime for illegal immigrants not to carry registration documents.
Money in Judicial Elections
February 14, 2011
New York’s top court officials will bar the state’s hundreds of elected judges from hearing cases involving lawyers and others who make significant contributions to their campaigns, a move that will change the political culture of courts and transform judicial elections by removing an important incentive lawyers have for contributing.
Judicial politics in New York State and New York City are byzantine, with the political parties often controlling the nomination process. But even uncontested elections in the city can cost $25,000 or more, with judges hiring campaign consultants and paying for campaign events and mailings. Of about 1,140 full-time trial judges in the state, about 730 are elected, including judges in the powerful Surrogate’s Court and the highest-level trial court, the State Supreme Court, which can hear cases worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
The national drive for scrutiny of contributions to judicial campaigns gained momentum after a 2009 Supreme Court ruling that said the chief justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court had wrongly ruled in the $50 million case of a coal company whose chief executive had spent $3 million to help elect him.
Fakhry Law Firm
September 3, 2010
Ekici & Artukmac, P.C. announces its strategic alliance with the Lebanese based international law firm, Fakhry Law Firm.
The Fakhry Law Firm, with offices in Lebanon and Qatar, has over four decades of experience in the MENA region providing a diverse range of legal services to its regional and international clients.
The synergy will augment both firms’ capabilities to provide innovative solutions tailored to the needs of their respective clients.
Mere Silence Doesn’t Invoke Miranda
June 1, 2010
Criminal suspects seeking to protect their right to remain silent must speak up to invoke it, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday, refining the court’s landmark 1966 ruling in Miranda v. Arizona.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in a 5-to-4 decision that split along familiar ideological lines, did not disturb Miranda’s requirement that suspects be told they have the right to remain silent. But he said courts need not suppress statements made by defendants who received such warnings, did not expressly waive their rights and spoke only after remaining silent through hours of interrogation.
“A suspect who has received and understood the Miranda warnings, and has not invoked his Miranda rights, waives the right to remain silent by making an uncoerced statement to the police,” Justice Kennedy wrote.