BP PLC said Monday that it has made an initial deposit of $3 billion into a $20 billion spill-recovery fund.

BP said it was making the deposit earlier than the originally scheduled Sept. 30 deadline to show its commitment to restoring the livelihoods of people affected by the worst offshore oil spill in history. The company said it would make an additional $2 billion deposit in the fourth quarter.

In June, BP agreed to set up the fund following a meeting between company Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg and then-Chief Executive Tony Hayward with U.S. President Barack Obama and senior administration officials.

BP said the account would be administered by a newly established trust overseen by former U.S. District Judge John Martin and by Kent Syverud, dean of the Washington University School of Law. Citigroup Inc. will serve as corporate trustee.

"We are pleased that BP made an initial contribution and has taken an important step toward honoring its commitment to the President and the residents and business owners in the Gulf region," Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli said in a statement. "We have made clear that the company still needs to ensure that the necessary funds will be available if something happens to the subsidiary that established the trust and we look forward to completion of an appropriate security arrangement in the near future."

Lawyers who represent children in dependency proceedings say it’s time for these children – regardless of which state they live – to have a right to legal counsel.

Meeting yesterday at the 2010 American Bar Association Annual Meeting in San Francisco, a panel of children’s rights advocates discussed eliminating the barriers that prevent lawyers from representing these children in life-impacting legal proceedings.  

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services there are more than half a million children in foster care and under the jurisdiction of family courts.  These are children who have been, for example, removed from their homes, placed in temporary shelters and possibly separated from siblings.

When it comes down to who is looking out for the rights and interests of the children in the courtroom – a lawyer, a guardian ad litem or an attorney ad litem -- there is no clear-cut, uniform answer.

“Every state has a different model,” says Hilarie Bass, a Miami commercial litigator who does pro bono work representing foster kids.

She points out the obvious — that there are too many children who need help, without enough money in the system to serve them.  Despite those hurdles, Bass, who is also incoming chair of the American Bar Association Section of Litigation, says she expects the section to make a recommendation on the right to counsel for children that should come up for debate before the ABA’s policymaking body in 2011.

“It would be a recommendation to provide for counsel and representation of children in delinquency and dependency proceedings,” says Bass. 

ABA President Carolyn Lamm says the ABA is an association interested in promoting the best interest of children and finding solutions “before we have a crisis situation.”

Lamm adds, “These citizens are the most vulnerable of course, in terms of no one to defend their legal rights.  The ABA does so much work in the public interest.  This is a segment of the public that needs us and we are strong and forceful advocates for children and the rights of children to be represented."  

So far, the U.S. Supreme Court has not spoken on the issue of whether children have a constitutional right to counsel in dependency proceedings.

Georgia attorney Trenny Stovall directs the DeKalb County Child Advocacy Center and represents children in dependency proceedings every day.  She says children who don’t have their own lawyer do not have a voice.

“When children don’t have a lawyer, their ability to be considered a living being with rights is vastly diminished.  Without representation, they become a widget in the eyes of the court,” says Stovall.

Children like 16-year-old Trevor Wade — who has been through the dependency court system — will tell you that having a lawyer makes a difference.  He says his lawyer fought against a system that would have placed him back with an abusive father.  These days he’s an intern in a public defender’s office, helping kids who are going through the court system.

Wade hopes to go to law school and is zealous in his advocacy on this issue.

He says that when states and courts make decisions not to provide lawyers for children, the question that needs to be asked is, “What is the price of a child’s success?”

Democratic Party Chairman Tim Kaine is defending first lady Michelle Obama's vacation trip to Spain, saying critics of her travels are trying to politicize the issue.

Kaine tells NBC's "Today" show he thinks "it's wrong" to talk critically about her trips. Critics contend they send a poor message at a time when many Americans are out of work.

Kaine said, "She's a mom." He said this was an opportunity for her to take nine-year-old daughter Sasha to a part of the world she hadn't seen before.

Kaine said President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama are "focused on being good parents." Mrs. Obama returned with Sasha to the White House late Sunday. Her trip occurred as Obama was celebrating his 49th birthday and their other daughter, 12-year-old Malia, was away at summer camp.

Zack -- who will make his announcement during a speech to the association’s House of Delegates -- says it is important to include lawyers from all political persuasions and areas of the legal profession to examine the issue of access to justice.

“Our system of government was created with the basic belief that the doors to our courts would always be open to all citizens.  Equal justice under law is the birthright of Americans.  It is a promise enshrined in our Constitution and written over the entrance of our Supreme Court.  We need to make good on this promise,” says Zack.

Zack will outline his core presidential initiatives during his speech, as well as announce additional blue-ribbon participants for the ABA entities that will focus on the following topics: 

▪ access to justice and the underfunding of the judiciary;

▪ the need for increased civic education in our schools and society;

▪ Hispanic legal rights; and

▪ the ABA’s work in the area of disaster response and preparedness.

Zack’s official investiture as president begins at the close of the ABA Annual Meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 10.  He is a partner in the national law firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, and will be the first Hispanic president of the ABA in its more than 130-year history.

Additional information about Zack’s initiatives

The Task Force on the Preservation of the Justice System will be composed of talented and distinguished attorneys and judges from across the country.  Zack will call on them to highlight the fiscal crisis that has resulted in budget slashes to courts nationwide.  In particular, Zack will call attention to the devastating result of underfunded courts:  a decline in access to justice.

The Commission on Civic Education in the Nation’s Schools will draw on the combined talents of attorneys, judges, educators and organizational leaders.  Their role will be to promote civic education as a national educational priority, highlight and enhance existing civic education efforts and create opportunities for innovative civic education programs throughout the United States.

The Commission on Hispanic Legal Rights will identify important legal issues that represent barriers to full participation by, and daily contributions from, Hispanics living in the United States.  The work of the commission and its advisory committee will help focus and foster an environment that welcomes and recognizes the contributions of Hispanics in our society and ensures their human rights. 

The ABA Special Committee on Disaster Response and Preparedness will be charged with conducting “tabletop” exercises to assess the association’s readiness for a natural or manmade disaster, and will develop a comprehensive crisis plan.  In particular, Zack would like the committee to address how uncertainty can and might affect our way of life, our Constitutional guarantees and our system of justice, and to develop responsive measures that will help safeguard the future.

With nearly 400,000 members, the American Bar Association is the largest voluntary professional membership organization in the world.  As the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA works to improve the administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education, and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law.

David Boies challenged America’s lawyers to “bring the rule of law to its full fruition here in this country … to fulfill the goals and lofty rhetoric of our founding fathers,” as the keynote speaker at the Opening Assembly of the 2010 ABA Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

The rule of law was the assembly theme, as ABA members gathered in the Herbst Theater of the War Memorial Veterans Building, site of the signing of the charter of the United Nations in 1945.  

President Carolyn B. Lamm pointed to ABA efforts from activities of the Section of International Law to such projects as the Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative, the Rule of Law Initiative and the World Justice Project as advancing United Nations goals to spread democracy based on law around the world.

Boies, co-counsel with Ted Olson in winning a federal district court ruling Wednesday that overturned California’s Proposition 8, cited “numerous challenges to the rule of law in our own country,” in applying that theme at home.

When our nation was born, it consisted of “wes” and “theys,” Boies said, with the “wes” being white male property owners and the “theys” comprising everyone else.  As the national history unfolded, the circle of “wes” expanded to encompass more and more segments of society.  

“We have an opportunity to expand the circle of ‘wes’ until there are no more ‘theys,’” said Boies, urging lawyers to work toward ensuring that “liberty and equality and protection of individual rights is something that every citizen equally enjoys.”

To achieve that goal, Boies identified four challenges confronting his audience.

First, he suggested the rule of law works best when adversaries have equivalent resources, whether those resources are plentiful or sparse.   But the “time when our system tends to break down is when one party has tremendous resources and the other party does not.”  Those are the times that “threatened to undermine the protections of the rule of law… [and lawyers] need to find ways to reduce the imbalance,” he said.  He urged reducing procedural advantages that favor the “better resourced party,” and urged lawyers to not “use discovery as a war of attrition,” for example. 
   
Second, he called for “better tools to help juries” decide important but complex cases, such as allowing jurors to ask questions and take notes on testimony.

His third challenge was to “improve judges and the judicial machinery,” citing a “crisis in terms of financing the justice system in the United States.”  First year associates in his law firm are paid higher salaries than federal district court judges, and state court judges earn even less, he said.  “If we can’t afford to spend a fraction of what we are spending to expand that system to Iraq, something is wrong with our sense of priorities,” he maintained.  

All lawyers must stand up for the independence of judges, resisting threats to their safety when they make unpopular decisions, said Boies, noting that there already have been threats to harm the judge who  ruled in the Proposition 8 litigation.

Boies’ cited predictably equal application of the law without regard to the identity of the parties as the final challenge to the rule of law, saying that when rights depend on who is asserting them, “the rule of law is undermined.”

Speaking to the decision, ABA President Carolyn B. Lamm noted, “The ruling of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California certainly points out what a very significant legal issue or series of issues marriage equality raises.  We know that marriage equality impacts issues in families’ lives — taxation, succession, custody of children, breakup and others.”

Panelists of the program were to include Ted Olson, who argued the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger that challenged the constitutional validity of Proposition 8, but given the ruling’s timing, Olson was unable to attend.  Therese Stewart, San Francisco chief deputy city attorney, spoke in his stead. 

Stewart pointed out that evidence and research have shown that there is no difference in children being able to function whether raised by opposite sex parents or parents of the same sex.  People’s feelings on morality and immortality should not be the basis of law, said Stewart.

Gill v. OPM, in contrast, focused on federal recognition of couples who are already married, specifically Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act dealing will federal benefits.  Mary Bonauto, who argued that case, cited that marriage equality is not only about benefits but is as much about responsibilities, providing the example of conditioning eligibility for benefits on financial means.

Raymond Marshall, former president of the Bar Association of San Francisco and the State Bar of California, who moderated the program asked why marriage was sought, rather than civil unions or some other arrangement.  “Words matter.  Names matter,” stressed Stewart. “Everyone knows what marriage means.”

When asked why lawyers and courts should be involved, Bonauto succinctly stated that marriage is a legal institution.  In days gone by, interracial marriages have been prohibited as have inmate marriages. 

Lawyers and courts are important, argued panelists — Beth Robinson, an expert on state court marriage equality cases, also spoke — but the court of public opinion is also critical.  “I’m not sanguine about young people favoring [marriage equality],” said Stewart.  Popular opinions are fluid.

One attendee asked whether contracts entered into by committed individuals were being challenged.  The number of gaps that need filing in order to address all needs are too onerous.  “No paper I could draft” could address them all, noted Robinson.  

Marshall emphasized that — in the spirit of the American Bar Association — program planners invited speakers on both sides of the issue to take part in the session, but did not receive any acceptances from the other side.

The Annual Meeting of the American Bar Association runs through Aug. 10.  During the meeting of its policymaking House of Delegates on Aug. 9 – 10, the association will consider a recommendation dealing with marriage equality.  

The recommendation, as it is being brought to the House, reads, “[T]he American Bar Association urges state, territorial and tribal governments to eliminate all of their legal barriers to civil marriage between two persons of the same sex who are otherwise eligible to marry.”

Lamm noted, “As the nation's largest organization of lawyers, we in fact need to consider these issues because it impacts the lives of the public.  We will be debating them on Monday and this certainly helps to inform our debate.”

More than 20 entities of the ABA as well as state and local bars are bringing the measure to the House of Delegates. The ABA, with nearly 400,000 members, is the largest voluntary professional association in the world.

Civil rights groups on Thursday accused the U.S. Census Bureau of discrimination in its hiring of more than a million temporary workers to conduct the 2010 census, saying it ignored a warning from a federal agency that its hiring practices might violate the Civil Rights Act.

The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Public Citizen Litigation Group were among groups that sued the secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce in April to end the hiring practices and obtain back pay for plaintiffs. They beefed up the lawsuit Thursday with new claims and plaintiffs.

The lawsuit, which seeks class action status in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, alleges the Census Bureau in hiring temporary workers over the past two years illegally screened out applicants with often decades-old arrest records for minor offenses or those who were arrested but never convicted. It accuses the bureau, a division of the Department of Commerce, of discriminating against more than 100,000 blacks, Latinos and Native Americans, who are more likely to have arrest records than whites.