Around here we get pretty excited about Washington State Bar Association deskbooks. And we get REALLY excited when a new edition comes out. So you can imagine the giddiness with which the library received the newly released third edition of the Washington Family Law Deskbook. The release of the third…

A new statewide Crosscut/Elway poll ranked cost of living, housing costs and related economic aspects as the top voter priority, cited by 34% of respondents. Public safety, including crime and drug use, came in second place with 23% of voters mentioning that first in response to an open-ended question. Close…

One of the tactics that judicial branches use to try to create some uniformity in the way trial judges operate is the publication of benchbooks or bench guides. In 1996, Nancy McMurrer of the University of Washington’s Gallagher Law Library explained: Benchbooks are books written by judges for judges; they…

When you are suffering from a mental illness or love someone who is, you may not know where to turn for help. The National Institute of Health reported that in 2020, nearly one in five adults was living with a mental illness. In their 2022 report, The State of Mental…

We read the events in the news on a daily basis — law enforcement has used deadly force against a suspected perpetrator, a mentally unstable person, or even sometimes an innocent person minding their own business. …

On June 24, 2022 the US Supreme Court issued a decision in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The Court’s holding, as summarized by SCOTUSBlog, was that “[t]he Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey…

Since July of this year, petitioners seeking protection orders in Washington State are using a new more streamlined process. The state legislature reformed the civil protection order law in 2021 and 2022. The laws repealed and amended hundreds of statutory sections. Protection orders, commonly known as restraining orders, are filed…

“[T]he right to vote remains the most powerful symbol of stake-holding in our democracy.” — Christopher Uggen & Jeff Manza, Voting and Subsequent Crime and Arrest: Evidence from a Community Sample The Washington State Legislature amended the voting laws in 2021 to restore voter eligibility to persons convicted of a…

On October 8, 2021, President Joe Biden issued a proclamation acknowledging the observance of Indigenous Peoples’ Day. President Biden proclaimed it “as a day to honor Native Americans, their resilience and their contributions to American society throughout history, even as they faced assimilation, discrimination and genocide spanning generations.” While the…