Poll of judges finds Zoom to be the most popular platform for remote court hearings
Zoom and WebEx are far and away the platforms being used most often for remote court hearings during the COVID-19 crisis, a national survey of judges found.
Zoom received 48 percent of the vote and WexEx 25 percent.
The unscientific poll was taken earlier this month by The National Judicial College, the nation’s oldest, largest and most widely attended school for judges. The College emailed the survey question to its more than 12,000 judicial alumni nationally and received 702 responses.
Here’s how other platforms finished in the survey: Skype (9.69%), Microsoft Teams (9.12%), GoToMeeting (6.13%), Google Hangouts (3.85%), BlueJeans (3.56%), CourtCall (3.13%), Adobe Connect (0.14%), and Other (10.54%).
Several judges reported that Zoom had streamlined operations and they plan to continue using the service even after social distancing requirements have been lifted.
Some of the featured mentioned positively:
• The “waiting room” feature that limits admission to meetings;
• Recordability, which can create copies of hearings for court files;
• Break-out rooms for confidential counsel;
• Greater access to the justice system overall.
Nessel opposes federal effort to scale back regulations by replacing WOTUS Rule
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel issued the following statement on the request for a nationwide stay of enforcement of the Trump administration’s finalized Navigable Waters Protection Rule (NWPR). If implemented, the NWPR will significantly scale back the waters regulated under the Clean Water Act.
While Michigan already has stringent water protections under state statutes, indirect impacts would be substantial as protections in neighboring states would become more lenient, which would lead to downstream pollution that harms Michigan.
“The Clean Water Act’s job is to provide a federal floor of water protection, not a basement, and replacing that with less effective regulation is worse for our environment,” Nessel said. “States share water resources with one another and without protective national standards, these shared resources will be subject to the standards of the lowest common denominator. A nationwide preliminary injunction is therefore necessary to protect the nation’s waters while Michigan and our fellow plaintiffs pursue a more permanent solution.”
The 2015 Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule clarified which bodies of water were subject to federal oversight under the Clean Water Act. Currently scheduled to take effect on June 22, 2020, the final NWPR will complete the Trump administration’s efforts to replace the 2015 WOTUS rule with a less protective rule that results in many wetlands and smaller streams being unregulated.?A nationwide preliminary injunction will prevent the implementation of this rule and preserve the status quo while Michigan and its fellow plaintiffs challenge the rule’s validity.
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