FORECLOSURE  LAW
The New York Law Journal takes an intimate look at a team of judges who lead the Brooklyn Foreclosure Committee, a group focused on the mounting legal woes generated by the collapse of the subprime mortgage industry. The paper interviews Supreme Court Justice Carolyn Demarest about a series of informal conversations on troubled lending practices in 2003, a discussion that grew into a formal committee. The judicial panel has worked hard to make these proceedings flow more smoothly while taking a careful look at foreclosure applications. One anonymous bank attorney expressed the concerns of bankers about this new committee. “[It] means well . . . it's just that decisions and ramifications should be well thought out," concluded the attorney, concerned about the new legal hurdles for foreclosures.

AND THE COMMISSION GOES TO...
On the morning after the Oscars, the Law Journal goes backstage at another selection process — handicapping the race to pick the next chairman of the Commission on Judicial Conduct. According to the story, Thomas A. Klonick, a Rochester attorney and vice-chair of the commission, is a shoo-in for the part. The solo practitioner has served as Perinton Town Court Justice for more than 12 years, and Klonick has helmed commission meetings for the last five months. Current chair Raoul L. Felder is set to resign the post in mid-March, in the wake of his co-authorship of a book that generated bad reviews from legal critics and the governor. The chair had co-written the tome, called Schmucks! with comedian Jackie Mason, detailing some of his legal and political exploits in a way that 10 commission members deemed "crude, biased, vulgar and otherwise demeaning." (Felder has missed a number of meetings after a beach umbrella accident in Miami Beach.)

GANG SIGNS
In the eyes of many Republicans, Senator John McCain’s greatest sin has been of the judicial variety. The New York Times reports how a coalition of conservatives have damned the presidential hopeful for his participation in what they call the “Gang of 14,” U.S. senators who led a 2005 compromise that avoided a vote that could have prohibited the use filibusters to block judicial nominees. At the time, Republican leadership had hoped to end the practice. The article cites prominent religious leader James C. Dobson and the president of Citizens for Community Values as two of the vocal critics who refuse to endorse McCain. The paper ends the judge-picking feature with a bit of media navel-gazing: “Mr. McCain’s recent clash with The New York Times over his reported ties to a lobbyist appeared to have bolstered the senator, at least temporarily, with some in the conservative wing.”

MOTHER'S DAY
On the morning of opening arguments in the trial of the police officers who killed Sean Bell November 2006, the New York Daily News reports on the relationship of his mother with the mother of another man killed by police officers. Kadiatou Diallo’s son Amadou was shot to death nine years ago in the Bronx, killed as NYPD officers mistook his movements for the presence of a gun. In a jury trial, all four officers were acquitted. His mother has spoken with Sean Bell’s mother a few times as the trial nears, counseling the woman on how to handle the bench trial of the three officers who killed her child. "You want to sit down and show that your child had a family that loved him and grieves for him," said the woman, urging Bell’s mother to be a visible presence in the courtroom of Supreme Court Justice Arthur Cooperman.