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Ohio has always had a strange hybrid system for judicial elections.  There is a partisan primary, followed by the general election which is nonpartisan.  Governor DeWine has just signed Senate Bill 80 into law which makes the seats on the Supreme Court of Ohio and the intermediate courts of appeals partisan races, beginning in November…

Justice Michael Donnelly and First District Court of Appeals Judge Pierre Bergeron have co-authored an article in The Atlantic titled “How a Spreadsheet Could Change the Criminal Justice System” in which they argue that “a lack of data instills trial-court judges with enormous, largely unrestrained sentencing power,” and make the case for a sentencing database…

 Catherine Sharkey, who is Crystal Eastman Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, has written a thought-provoking, and in light of the recent Supreme Court of Ohio decision in Stiner v. Amazon.com, Inc., Slip Opinion No. 2020-Ohio-4632, timely law review article entitled “Holding Amazon Liable as a Seller of Defective…

Commentary: Dueling Visions of Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor and Justice Sharon Kennedy

By Professor Emerita Marianna Bettman

Be forewarned. This is a wonky post. Well, I am a retired law professor.

Chief Justice O’Connor and Justice Kennedy don’t see eye to eye very much, especially in matters regarding juveniles.  One very clear example of this…

I am re-posting Attorney Bill Gallagher’s guest post on bail reform to include some additional information from him.

From Guest Blogger Bill Gallagher: The blog post I contributed on February 18, 2019 (re-posted below) was my condensation of a twenty-two page set of public comments  submitted to the Supreme Court of Ohio on September 26,…

Please read update to this post here.

On January 23, 2019, Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor convened a task force to examine the Ohio bail system. Read about that from Court News Ohio here. In light of this initiative, I have asked prominent Cincinnati criminal defense attorney Bill Gallagher to write a guest post on the…

Should Justice Pat DeWine have recused himself in cases in which the Attorney General’s office, led by his father, either appeared as a party, or as an amicus?  On November 9, 2018, a three-judge hearing panel unanimously said no, and dismissed a complaint filed January 30, 2018 by Bradley N. Frick, a Columbus attorney appointed…

Since the departure of former Justice Bill O’Neill in January, it’s been an all-Republican Supreme Court of Ohio, although there is often significant difference in viewpoint among those Republicans. Take the rights of juveniles, for example.  There’s still a big split on those cases, with Chief Justice O’Connor leading the charge in recognizing all the…