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Student Judiciary to provide legal counsel
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by Carolyn Potts
Monday, February 25, 2008
The Student Judiciary of the Associated Students of Madison
passed an amendment Sunday to provide legal counsel to the petitioners in their
court.
SJ has been considering appointing an outreach counsel to
help registered student organizations go through legal proceedings with the
Student Services Finance Committee or another RSO since early last semester.
“It will be a person that will act as a resource for
individuals and organizations that would like to appeal decisions through
Associated Students of Madison,” SJ Chief Justice Sol Grosskopf said.
According to Grosskopf, the position is needed because SJ’s
legal processes can be very complicated.
“We do have a complicated system of rules and processes …
and ways to appeal, and we as justices, as the arbitrators, can’t really assist
people as they work their way through,” Grosskopf said. “If we have a resource
to send them to, then the organizations and people have a resource to
understand the processes that they have to go through to make their viewpoints
heard in a legible form that goes before our body.”
SJ Vice Chief Justice Shaun Hernandez said the inspiration
for the position came from SSFC.
“One of the things that drove us to do this is the fact that
SSFC has their own counsel that they use for cases,” Hernandez said. “SSFC is a
pretty perennial respondent for SJ cases, and they have their counsel that does
all the research.”
According to Hernandez, the group wanted an analogue to
provide to groups that are petitioning against SSFC or any other group. He said
they wanted petitioners to have available to them the same resources and
knowledge that SSFC has.
“In short, it provides an equal footing for both parties
that appear before our court,” Grosskopf said.
SJ still needs to work out details of the new position,
Hernandez said, and they plan to discuss the exact duties of the outreach
counsel, including whether it will speak for the group and, in the case of two
different RSOs, whether the counsel will provide support to both parties.
“That is kind of the reason that we didn’t want to make the
outreach counsel an advocate in the strictest sense … that when they take on a
specific case or advocate for a specific group, they are completely and only
bound to that group,” Hernandez said. “If one RSO were filing against another
RSO, I guess, in theory, that outreach counsel could help both groups.”
According to Grosskopf, as of now, the counsel will be a
resource to help facilitate and help the organization in their own defense.
“It is not to work solely for the defense. It is simply a
resource,” he said.
The amendment was passed twice by SJ, and will be sent to Student Council in the next few weeks to be approved as an amendment to ASM bylaws.
Anonymous (February 25, 2008 @ 6:56am):
"Lisa, student government is meaningless. Your constitution is written on the back of a napkin."--Principal Seymour Skinner
Anonymous (February 25, 2008 @ 7:51am):
... and the parts about the Student Judiciary are really a food smudge that they misinterpreted.
Anonymous (February 25, 2008 @ 9:54am):
Folks, let's face it, the entire ASM organization is a front for Wiley that doesn't follow their own constitution, bylaws, and case law. Wisconsin shared governance statutes don't require the existence of ASM, so we should really throw it into a ditch and get on with our merry lives.
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