The Advocate - May 2012 - Idaho State Bar - Idaho.gov

Michelle R. Points
Idaho Delegate
to ABA House of Delegates
48 The Advocate • May 2012
aBa de l e g at e re P o r t
The 2012 Midyear meeting of the
American Bar Association (the ABA)
House of Delegates was held February
6 in New Orleans, Louisiana. This was
the fourth meeting I have attended as the
State Bar Delegate for Idaho. Attending
the meeting with me representing Idaho
were Tim Hopkins, who is on the ABA
Board of Governors, and Larry Hunter,
the Idaho State Delegate. As I have described
in previous articles, and for those
of you who are not familiar with the structure
of the ABA, the House of Delegates is
the policy-making body of the ABA. The
House of Delegates meets twice a year
at the ABA Annual and Midyear meetings.
The actions taken and resolutions
passed by the House of Delegates become
official ABA policy, allowing the ABA to
thereafter lobby before Congress and the
Executive branch for implementation of
that policy.
The overriding message in meetings
and discussions
at the Midyear
meeting, including
speeches by
ABA President
Bill Robinson and
others, was the
pending crisis of
lack of funding to
the courts and its
implications on
access to justice;
that the funda-
Michelle R. Points
mental right to justice is diminishing and
that we as members of the bar each have a
personal responsibility to assure that this
right is preserved, no matter what your
practice or position.
There were several resolutions presented
to the House of Delegates for consideration.
Of interest to state bar associations,
a resolution sponsored by the Bar
Association of Puerto Rico was passed to
urge courts and legislative bodies to respect
the organized bar’s ability and right
to function independently and express its
views freely.
Of interest to the criminal bar, several
important resolutions were passed. For
example, a resolution was passed to adopt
the ABA Criminal Justice Standards on
Law Enforcement Access to Third Party
Records to provide a framework for the
legislature, courts acting in their supervisory
capacity, and administrative agents
to balance the needs of law enforcement
and the interests of privacy, freedom of
expression and social participation. A
resolution was passed to urge governments
to adopt pretrial discovery procedures
requiring laboratories to produce
comprehensive and comprehensible laboratory
and forensic science reports for
use in criminal trials that include a number
of identified criterial. A resolution
was passed to urge judges and lawyers
to consider a number of factors in determining
the manner in which expert testimony
should be presented to a jury and
in instructing the jury in its evaluation of
expert scientific testimony in criminal and
delinquency proceedings. A resolution
was passed to urge judges and lawyers to
consider potential jurors’ understanding
of general scientific principles, scientific
principles relevant to forensic science,
and preconceptions or bias with respect to
forensic scientific principles in formulating
jury voir dire questions. A resolution
The fundamental right
to justice is diminishing
and we as members
of the bar each
have a personal
responsibility to
assure that this
right is preserved.
was passed to urge the federal government
to encourage public housing authorities to
reevaluate their current rules regarding
admission, termination, and additions to
households to ensure that, while resident
safety is protected, those rules do not
unfairly punish persons with criminal records.
A resolution was passed to support
legislation, policies and practices that allow
equal and uniform access to therapeutic
courts and problem-solving sentencing
alternatives, such as drug treatment and
anger management counseling, regard-