------ Forwarded Message
From: dorindamoreno <dorindamoreno@comcast.net>
thanks to: David Hoffman, Attorney and Human Rights Specialist
And here's the web link to track the status of S.1845, the federal legislation currently being used to push the court split described in the attached article:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:s.01845:
(Bill Summary & Status File for the Circuit Court of Appeals
Restructuring and Modernization Act of 2005 (S. 1845), including
links to full text and related documents. Maintained by Thomas
Legislative Register. I think you need to include the colon [ : ]
at the end of the Web address, when you go to this web page.)
K Bear in mind:
Advocates will need to track this proposal in other settings than
S. 1845. S. 1845 is only one of many present and future
channels for this very major thrust from the right. The same
proposal will surface again and again in new bills, as an
amendment to the budget, buried in "anti-terrorism"
and immigration DEform legislation, etc. etc.
David
----- Original Message -----
From: David Hoffman <mailto:dhoffmanlaw@earthlink.net>
To: Dorinda Moreno <mailto:dorindamoreno@comcast.net> ;
Sent: Friday, October 06, 2006 8:50 AM
Subject: FYI - Stealthy threat bears down on southwesterners from
political allies of the paramilitary right
Hi Dorinda
The attached article identifies a very ominous issue, which
could enable huge abuses and discriminatory legal precedents
against Latino individuals and Latino communities throughout the
Southwest.
The result could easily be a quasi invisible and very
powerful anti-immigrant, white-hegemonic bulwark within both the
SouthWest regional and the U.S. national policy apparatus: a huge
institutional obstacle planted like a stake in the heart of the
continent's cultural and geographical crossover point between our
Latino and Anglo communities.
Please forward as you see fit.
Dave Hoffman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
9th Circuit Judge Protests Proposal
for New Breakaway Circuit
Plan for 12th Circuit with no Hispanic judges draws fire
By Pamela A. MacLean
The National Law Journal
10-06-2006
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1160039129743
The long-simmering debate over splitting the nation's largest
federal appellate court heated up last month when one 9th Circuit
judge complained that a new breakaway circuit would have no
Hispanic judges.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is currently considering S. 1845, a
bill that would split the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, with
California, Hawaii and Guam in a new, shrunken 9th Circuit. A new
12th Circuit would be composed of Arizona, Nevada, Oregon,
Washington state, Idaho, Montana and Alaska.
"I'm a Republican and an appointee of President Bush, and it
dawned on me that the resulting 12th Circuit would be without a
single Hispanic judge. Nobody is focused on this," said Judge
Carlos T. Bea of San Francisco.
Bea joined the court in 2003. He was raised in Spain and is one of
six Hispanic judges among the 9th Circuit's 49 active and senior
judges.
In general, Republican lawmakers have pushed the split efforts
while Democratic legislators generally oppose the move. A majority
of the circuit's judges oppose a split, according to Chief Judge
Mary Schroeder.
Arizona, with a population that is 25 percent Hispanic, and
Nevada, with a 20 percent Hispanic population, would join the
Pacific Northwest states, but without Hispanic judges, Bea said.
The circuit's Hispanic judges, Arthur Alarcon, Ferdinand
Fernandez, Kim Wardlaw (whose mother is from Mexico), Richard
Paez, Consuelo Callahan and Bea, all California-based judges,
would remain on the split 9th Circuit.
Diarmuid O'Scannlain, a Portland, Ore.-based 9th Circuit judge who
has backed a circuit split since the mid-1990s, declined to
comment on Bea's concern.
O'Scannlain, who testified on Sept. 20 before the Senate Judiciary
Committee in support of the split, said his concern is with
effective judicial administration. He believes the circuit has
become too large to manage. The restructuring of the court should
not be based on Supreme Court "batting averages and public
perception of any of our decisions.
"I am quite confident the circuit will be split someday ... but I
have no idea when that may be," he said.
Bea said his concern "is important to the Hispanic bar and the
Hispanic community." He said Hispanics "like to be represented the
same as blacks. It is a sign you are accepted in the community.
People I talk to are upset ... they want to see Hispanics achieve
and be recognized."
TIED TO IMMIGRATION?
"We see this as tied to the immigration debate," said James Reyna,
president of the Hispanic National Bar Association and an
international trade partner at Williams & Mullen in Washington, D.C.
"The bill as it is now written would take the most integrated and
diverse circuit, with good representation of Hispanics, and split
it with a new 12th Circuit with no Hispanics," he said. "The
concentration of Hispanics has a direct adverse impact on the
Hispanic community.
Reyna said the split would also impose a larger caseload on the
remaining judges in a new California-centered 9th Circuit because
it would retain 80 percent of the caseload, more than 500 cases
per judge, as opposed to 350 for the 12th Circuit.
Among the circuit's district courts, which would be divided along
the same state lines, half the 5,700 immigration-related criminal
offenses in 2005, such as illegal re-entry, come from Arizona and
Nevada, while most of the rest came from Southern California.
Among the 6,200 asylum and other immigration appeals to the 9th
Circuit so far in fiscal year 2006, more than 5,000 arise in
California alone, according to circuit statistics.
------ End of Forwarded Message
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