During its annual meeting earlier this week, the American Bar Association's policy-making House of Delegates compiled its collective wisdom and made recommendations to the legislative branch on many prescient legal matters including federal judicial nomination process, access to courts for military personnel and international criminal court procedure.

The two days of sessions in New York City were characterized as "productive" by Ohio delegation member and Ohio State Bar Association Assistant Executive Director Bill Weisenberg.

The 555 delegates from all 50 states approved recommendations to urge the U.S. Congress to expand active duty military members' access to the courts, especially when they are victims of government conduct deemed tortious. The recommendation is a call for the effective nullification of the Feres Doctrine, which denies military members access to the courts when they are victims of wrongful government conduct.

Weisenberg said the vote to send the recommendation was almost unanimous.

"To provide our veterans with access and assistance in their legal matters, everybody thought it was the right thing to do," said Weisenberg. "There was no resistance of that to my knowledge."

The recommendation dispenses with a semantic issue in allowing access to courts for conduct that occurs "during a time of war," altering the applicable situation to "during time of armed conflict," thereby bringing the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan under the tort umbrella as declarations of war were never officially made.

To revise the confirmation process for federal judges that incoming ABA President H. Thomas Wells Jr. said "too often involves lengthy, partisan conflict and delay," the delegates also adopted a recommendation encouraging senators and delegates in each state to create bipartisan commissions to evaluate the qualifications of prospective candidates for nomination to U.S. district and courts of appeals.

The body also pushed through a resolution to urge the U.S. government to broaden its involvement with the International Criminal Court and to participate in all future sessions of the ICC's governing body, the Assembly of States Parties. According to the ABA, by cooperating with the court's investigations and proceedings, the international rule of law could thus be enhanced.

Other resolutions addressed international recovery of child support, federal review of disproportionate representation of racial and ethnic minority children in the child welfare system, bylaw amendments to the Bar Association of the District of Columbia concerning post secondary education studies, revision of life-sustaining medical treatment procedures based on the Physicians Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment or "POLST" rules, and recommendations to improve prescription drug monitoring programs nationwide.

The House of Delegates also adopted proposals to recommend that trial judges sensitize jurors to the possibility of error when defendants are identified by eyewitnesses of a different race and press the U.S. government to allow clinicians to provide medications to the partners of patients whom they are treating for sexually transmitted diseases without prior examination of the partners.

All told, some four dozen recommendations were approved by the delegates.

Concerning a recent government report on hiring practices of the Justice Department, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey encouraged the delegates to discuss professionalism in the department.

"The mission of the Justice Department is the even-handed application of the Constitution enacted under it," said Mukasey. "That mission has to start with the even-handed application of the laws within our department."

During the session, Judge Patricia Wald was awarded the ABA Medal for 2008, the association's highest honor which is not given annually and only when an individual has rendered "exceptionally distinguished service to the cause of American jurisprudence."

Wald, the first woman judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, recently represented the United States on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Attorney Lee Kolczon of Sheffield Village, an Ohio delegate, said none of the issues addressed would directly affect his concerns as a representative for the general practice and small firm division.

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