Majority-female court hears cases, meets with students on International Women's Day
Eugene, Ore. – On International Women's Day, the University of Oregon School of Law hosted the Oregon Supreme Court for oral arguments of two cases. This is the 19th time the court has been in session at the Knight Law Center of the School of Law.
In addition to observing oral arguments, law students had an opportunity to ask questions of the justices. Their questions ranged from how to be an effective advocate to what type of work recent graduates do as law clerks for the justices. Later, the justices, students, and members of the Lane County Bar Association convened for lunch in the Wayne Morse Commons of the law school.
The cases heard included State of Oregon v. Tracy Lynn Lien and Esteban Chavez v. State of Oregon. Judge David Schuman, a member of the Oregon Law faculty, previewed the cases for students and the public on March 7. In the first case, Ore. v. Tracy Lynn Lien, the court confronted the question of whether police can ask a sanitation company to pick up a person’s garbage and turn it over to law enforcement so officers could search it for evidence of criminal activity.
The second case, Chavez v. Ore., involved the fate of a non-citizen with “lawful permanent residence” status. Mr. Chavez was arrested for drug-related offenses and, on advice from his attorney, pleaded guilty to one charge in exchange for a more lenient sentence than he would have faced had he gone to trial and lost. His attorney did not tell him that pleading guilty would expose him to deportation. Several years later, the United States Supreme Court held that a lawyer who fails to inform the client of the immigration consequences of pleading guilty has not provided the client with adequate assistance of counsel, as required by the constitution. Mr. Chavez then sought to have his conviction vacated. The issues before the court were, first, whether Mr. Chavez’s petition for post-conviction relief came too late, and, if not, whether the United States Supreme Court’s decision about “adequate assistance of counsel” should be applied to Mr. Chavez’s case even though, at the time of his trial, the Supreme Court had not yet announced that rule.
The Oregon Supreme Court is made up of seven justices, of which five are women, and one, Justice Martha Lee Walters, is an alumna of Oregon Law. This is the first time in the court’s history that the majority of justices are women.
