Florida says not so fast to new bar exam, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's 'assured' debut, Biden taps new district court judges, and more ??
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Florida will not use the new version of the bar exam when it debuts in July 2026—an early blow to the revamped test that the National Conference of Bar Examiners is currently designing.
The Florida Board of Bar Examiners said on Monday that it will stick with its current bar exam format in 2026 and will decide later whether to use the NextGen Bar Exam after July 2026.
The National Conference has said that it will offer jurisdictions a choice between the current Uniform Bar Exam—which consists of the 200 multiple-choice question Multistate Bar Exam, the Multistate Essay Exam, and the Multistate Performance Test—and the NextGen Bar exam starting in July 2026. But within two years, states will have to choose between the NextGen Bar exam or some other form of test.
Florida isn't the only state that has shown early skepticism over the new bar exam. The State Bar of California's Board of Trustees has endorsed a proposal to design its own test rather than use the NextGen bar exam, though the California Supreme Court has yet to act on that recommendation.
Florida is the fourth-largest bar exam jurisdiction in the country, behind New York, California, and Texas, and it appears to be the first to make a public announcement about the format of the July 2026 test.?
As the U.S. Supreme Court's current term nears its end, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden last year, has earned a reputation as an assertive presence with a bit of an independent streak, willing to ask tough questions and to decide cases with her fellow liberals or at times with the majority conservatives.
According to legal scholar Adam Feldman, who tracks court data, Jackson spoke more during oral arguments than any of the other current justices during their first terms.
"She's just showed up from day one," said Terry Maroney, a Vanderbilt Law School professor who studies judicial decision-making and behavior.
"She knows what she's doing, she's not shy, she's posing uncomfortable hypotheticals - and she's not afraid to do those things even if it's causing discomfort."
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U.S. President Joe Biden has nominated another round of federal judges for trial courts in New York, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, the White House said on Wednesday.
Margaret Garnett, Biden's pick for a judgeship in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, was the deputy U.S. attorney in that office until last month. Brandy McMillion, nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, has served in the U.S. attorney's office there since 2015 and led its general crimes unit since 2022.
Biden also tapped U.S. Magistrate Judge Jennifer Hall of Delaware for a lifetime appointment on the state's U.S. district court. Hall earlier led the civil division for the U.S. attorney's office in Delaware.
The president nominated Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Karoline Mehalchick of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania to serve as a district judge on that court.
Under a U.S. Senate tradition known as the "blue slip," senators can block judicial nominees for federal trial courts in their states. Because Wednesday's nominees are all for states with two Democratic senators, such opposition is unlikely. All federal judgeships require Senate confirmation.
Law firm Crowell & Moring's lawsuit against its Washington, D.C., landlord to recover $30 million in rent refunds due to pandemic disruptions can proceed, a District of Columbia Superior Court judge said Wednesday.
Associate Judge Donald Walker Tunnage at a hearing denied The TREA 1001 Pennsylvania Avenue Trust's bid to dismiss the case.
Washington-founded Crowell sued TREA Trust in March, arguing that local government orders restricted the law firm's access to its headquarters from March 2020 through May 2021.
During Wednesday's hearing, the judge and lawyers for Crowell and TREA Trust discussed how to interpret lease agreement terms such as "access" to the building and "essential" services.
"I think this was not an easy case; if it were, we wouldn’t be here," Tunnage said.
The judge said Crowell's allegations are sufficient for the case to proceed, and the matter ultimately comes down to a factual dispute between the law firm and landlord, which can be addressed at a later stage.
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