West Cook News

Decalogue Society of Lawyers executive director Aviva Patt says more time is needed to create judicial subcircuit maps that better represent the Jewish community.

The Senate and House Redistricting Committees recently released a proposed map of new Cook County Judicial Subcircuit boundaries with the proposal calling for the number of subcircuits to rise from 15 to 20 largely on the strength of population growth across the Chicagoland area. The change is designed to reflect shifts in populations experienced since the turn of the millennium.

“The legislature created judicial subcircuits in Cook County to enable racial and ethnic communities to elect judges that would increase the diversity of the bench, and the 9th subcircuit is the only one where that applies to the Jewish community," Patt said during a Dec. 16 House and Senate Joint Redistricting Committee hearing focused on the sub-circuit maps for Cook County. "When I spoke in October, we were then talking about 15 subcircuits and not 20. We talked about the desire to expand into areas that had large jewish populations. ... Obviously with 20 subcircuits we are looking at a whole new process so what we're asking for, first of all, for there to be more time, we'd like to be able to draw a new map based on the 20 subcircuits instead of the 15."

Patt said that the mission of the Decalogue Society of Lawyers, the nation’s oldest Jewish Bar Association, has always been focused on fighting for and facilitating equality.

“Our mission includes educating the public on legal and Jewish issues, maintaining vigilance against discriminatory public and private practices, particularly anti-Semitism, and working with other ethnic communities to combat hate and promote justice,” 

She gave the committee a brief history of her organization.

“In our earliest days during the rise of anti-Semitism, Decalogue often had to fight for equal opportunities for Jewish lawyers to advance in their professions,” she said. “We challenged newspaper job listings that specified “gentile” or “non-Jew” as requirements for hiring and worked to end the scheduling of the Bar exam on Jewish holidays. Sometimes we had to respond to anti-Semitism expressed in court by other attorneys and even by judges.”