[ News Article ]
Philadelphia Bar Association Chancellor Jane Dalton Touts Judicial Independence
By Asher Hawkins
December 6, 2006
The Legal Intelligencer
Incoming Philadelphia Bar Association Chancellor Jane Leslie Dalton told members yesterday that promoting "judicial independence" would be one of her top goals for 2007.
"The freedom we enjoy as Americans depends, above all, on our courts," Dalton, Duane Morris' first female partner, told the audience at the association's winter quarterly luncheon. "This most vulnerable branch of our government is being attacked. The judges cannot speak out and defend themselves. We can and we must."
Dalton knows a thing or two about successfully speaking up on behalf of judges.
Along with Duane Morris partner John Soroko and Robert Heim of Dechert, she represented a group of common pleas judges from across the state in their effort to convince the state Supreme Court to reinstate the judicial salary increases repealed in the fall of 2005 after the General Assembly's pay-raise legislation from earlier that summer led to significant public backlash.
In a widely publicized September opinion, a five-justice majority ruled in favor of the judges.
"Our judges must be free to render decisions based on the rule of law without fear of reprisal," Dalton stressed yesterday.
Noting that a round of state court judicial elections will be held in 2007, Dalton urged bar members to stay on top of which candidates have been listed as recommended by the association's judicial elections commission, and then share that information with friends and family.
Though she said that the association's recommendations will, as in years past, be publicized by the bar, Dalton did not specifically address a chief concern for the bar during election years: How to persuade powerbrokers in the local Democratic Party machine to consider the association's suggestions before the party officially endorses individual judicial candidates.
Besides judicial independence, Dalton said the other top goals of her 2007 agenda would be membership outreach and reminding the community of the legal industry's impact on the region's economy.
Dalton said the bar must do more to attract local law students to long-term careers in Philadelphia.
She suggested that creating a program that matches local law school students with attorneys who need assistance with pro bono cases could help both Philadelphia's ability to retain legal talent and bar members' efforts to increase pro bono output.
As for her third goal, Dalton said that she wants to highlight "the importance of the legal community to the economic prosperity of our city."
Dalton, like her recent predecessors, also plans to lobby City Council to reform Philadelphia's tax scheme; in particular, the controversial business privilege tax. She noted that city law firms pay nearly three-quarters of the BPT revenue generated by levies on professional services entities.
Dalton will be the association's fourth female chancellor.
The grandmother of seven spoke of how after she graduated from Smith College, "at job interviews, the primary question posed to me was whether I could type."
She also joked about learning she was pregnant soon after accepting an offer to join Duane Morris out of law school.
"I arrived at the firm that summer seven months pregnant - and no one ever told me they didn't know I was pregnant," she said.
Before Dalton addressed the membership, two Center City attorneys were presented with an annual association award for their work as co-coordinators of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania's prisoner civil rights panel.
The 2006 Wachovia Fidelity Award's co-winners - Stephen Brown of Dechert and Samuel Silver of Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis - have headed that panel since 1993.
Another honoree yesterday was Ken Shear, the association's longtime executive director. Shear was recognized for his 30-year commitment to the bar.
And outgoing Chancellor Alan M. Feldman was presented with a memento of his year at the bar's helm by current Pennsylvania Bar Association President Kenneth Horoho Jr.
The Pittsburgh attorney said that Feldman started out 2006 appearing to be in the 5-foot-9 range, but finished his year as chancellor looking as tall as Wilt Chamberlain.
"Next year he's going to make a lot of money," Horoho said, referring to a bar chancellor's traditional diminution in practice duties during his or her year in power. "So the perfect gift is a new money clip."
This article originally appeared in The Legal Intelligencer and is republished here with permission from law.com.