The VLW Blog

The General Assembly unanimously elected former attorney general and legislator William C. Mims this afternoon to the Supreme Court of Virginia, effective April 1.
The election was a foregone conclusion after his appearance Monday before the House and Senate Courts of Justice Committees as the only candidate for the position. Our report on that appearance and [...]

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William C. Mims will become only the second person to serve as a Virginia legislator, an attorney general and a member of the Supreme Court of Virginia.
Any doubts that he will replace Justice Barbara M. Keenan, who was confirmed last week as a judge of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, disappeared this afternoon [...]

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Franklin County Circuit Judge William N. Alexander II wrote the members of the House Courts of Justice Committee yesterday that he has done some serious soul searching since he appeared before the committee on Feb. 24. Our account that appearance is here.
He acknowledged mistakes in his handling of a special grand jury that indicted Franklin [...]

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The Virginia Family Law Coalition won one and lost one today in the Senate Courts of Justice Committee.
House Bill 14 would have allowed a judge to draw an adverse inference if a party or witness refuses, on the ground of self-incrimination, to answer a question about adultery or certain other sexual crimes that remain on [...]

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House Bill 1306 would require jurors to provide a Social Security, voter registration card or photo identification when they assemble for juror selection.

If a juror doesn’t have the ID with him, he must sign “a statement affirming, under penalty of perjury, that he is the named juror.”

“Is this a problem outside of movies and novels?” [...]

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The Senate voted 23-17 today to drastically increase filing fees in general district and circuit courts to provide money for sheriffs and commonwealth’s attorneys.
Proponents of Senate Bill 329, patroned by Sen. Richard H. Stuart, R-Westmoreland, contend there is no other to generate about $50 million and save the jobs of about 1,400 deputy sheriffs.
Critics countered [...]

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The cost of filing general district court suits would almost triple and circuit court filing fees would increase at least six-fold under a bill that passed the Senate Finance Committee this morning.
The $50 million that the increases would generate would go to sheriffs and commonwealth’s attorneys who are looking laying off employees as a result [...]

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A series of bills that the judicial system regards as an intrusion on its turf cleared their first legislative hurdle yesterday when they were reported out of the judicial systems subcommittee of House Courts of Justice Committee.

The legislation would eliminate the Virginia court system’s two top policy-making bodies, limit the authority of the executive secretary [...]

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Del. H. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, and Del. David J. Toscano, D-Charlottesville, agreed that children can be kept in limbo far too long by proceedings to terminate parental rights.
But they had different approaches to reducing the delay. Griffith’s House Bill 292 would have put jurisdiction over terminations in circuit court, rather than in juvenile and domestic [...]

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State health care organizations wanted a pilot project to look at something other than a hard-nosed “deny and defend” response to a medical error.
But the proposal from the Joint Commission on Health Care died this afternoon when the civil subcommittee of the House Courts of Justice Committee voted to carry House Bill 306 over to [...]

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