Minority women seem unable to ascend the corporate ladder

Black Girl Magic is Hard Work

By Michelle Jenkins

Michelle Jenkins is a Chicago lawyer and policy analyst. Her passion for assisting marginalized populations has led her to write about the challenges women of color surmount in the workplace. Her goal is to remind us of the work we still have to do in our efforts to eliminate racial and gender biases and discrimination. She can be contacted at mjenkin4@gmail.com.

Posted June 13, 2019 9:57 AM

I was admittedly more excited than average when rumors began to circulate that Kamala Harris was going to launch a bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. This would be the first time a graduate of a historically black college or university had run for the office since I had reached voting age and the first time a member of a Divine Nine Greek sorority had been a major contender since I’d been eligible to vote.To put icing on the cake, Harris, one of California’s two U.S. senators, is an attorney …

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Lawyer erred on personal representative after learning defendant was dead

Answering a question certified for immediate appeal in a case where the plaintiff didn’t know the defendant was dead when the lawsuit was filed, the Illinois Appellate Court concluded that the maneuver used by plaintiff’s attorney to rectify the problem — having his secretary appointed as “personal representative” of the decedent’s estate under Sec. 13-209(c) of the Code of Civil Procedure and then naming her as defendant in an amended complaint — was the wrong move.
By Steven P. Garmisa
High court says judge erred in trying to ‘rehabilitate’ juror

Guided by the principle that the purpose of voir dire is “investigation, not persuasion” — and bolstered by scholarly commentary that included a 2023 Chicago-Kent Law Review article — the Oregon Supreme Court critiqued a judge’s efforts to “rehabilitate” a prospective juror.
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Assigned a multidistrict litigation (MDL) that grew from a couple of dozen cases to nearly a thousand, and observing cases that were not properly investigated or attended to by counsel, a judge in the Middle District with Georgia expressed a famous frustration with a process that has only gotten worse in the eight years since.
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Claiming immunity under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act when Eduardo Santos sued for severe injuries allegedly caused by a police officer who shot him in the face with a rubber bullet, Defense Technology — the company that manufactured the “kinetic impact projectile” and KIP launcher — argued the statute’s product-liability exception didn’t apply.
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“The law that applies to this case is stated in these instructions, and it is your duty to follow all of them.” So states Illinois Pattern Jury Instruction 1.01(2), which the judge reads to the jurors in every criminal case before the jury begins its deliberations. If we expect jurors to follow the law, we surely must expect judges to lead by example and do the same thing.
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Accused of insider trading, Michael Shvartsman argued this offense is “criminal law made by judges” that violates Article I of the U.S. Constitution and the non-delegation doctrine.
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Court assesses offsets against employee’s underinsured claim

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Iowa Supreme Court blocks testimony about business records

In a case where prosecutors relied on the hearsay rule’s business-records exception to justify testimony about documents that weren’t admitted into evidence, the Iowa Supreme Court, citing decisions from across the country, reversed because “the rules of evidence create a ‘business records exception’ to the rule against hearsay and not a ‘testimony about business records exception.’”
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