scholarly journals Lawyers, the Legal Profession & Access to Justice in the United States: A Brief History

Daedalus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 148 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-189
Author(s):  
Robert W. Gordon
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Legal Professionals ◽  
The Public ◽  
Legal Advice ◽  
The Poor ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Business Entities

Ideally, justice is a universal good: the law protects equally the rights of the rich and powerful, the poor and marginal. In reality, the major share of legal services goes to business entities and wealthy people and the prestige and prosperity to the lawyers who serve them. This essay deals with the history of access to justice–chiefly civil justice–and with the role of lawyers and organized legal professions in promoting and restricting that access. In the last century, legal professionals and others have taken small steps to provide access to legal processes and legal advice to people who could not otherwise afford them. By doing so, they have inched closer to the ideals of universal justice. Though the organized bar has repeatedly served its own interests before those of the public, and has restricted access to justice for the poor, it has been a relatively constructive force.

scholarly journals Lawyers' Obligation to Provide Legal Services

1995 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 719 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justice J.C. Major
Keyword(s):  
Ad Hoc ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
The Public ◽  
Ethical Concerns ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Pro Bono ◽  
History Of ◽  
Eligibility Requirements

This article addresses ethical concerns in the legal profession and the challenge of not only providing legal services, but ensuring that the public has access to them. The author asserts that the whole profession is under an obligation to render legal services pro bono publico. Such has been the tradition since the beginning of the profession in thirteenth century Europe. The article follows the history of pro bono work since medieval times, and compares the system in the United States with that in Canada. In the U.S. there is a greater commitment by firms to provide pro bono work, whereas in Canada, it tends to be on a more ad hoc basis. Canadian lawyers too often assume that government-funded legal aid systems adequately meet the public's needs. Legal aid, however, is facing increasing financial challenges. Moreover, a large number of Canadians who do not meet the eligibility requirements cannot afford to retain a lawyer. There is a need for a modified pro bono program that will assist not only the poor, but the working class as well.

“The Pleasures of Merely Circulating”

2014 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-174
Author(s):  
Caroline Gelmi
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
Early American ◽  
Female Authors ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
Early National ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Cultural Functions

Caroline Gelmi, “‘The Pleasures of Merely Circulating’: Sappho and Early American Newspaper Poetry” (pp. 151–174) This essay examines how early national verse cultures Americanized the popular figure of Sappho. Newspaper parodies of fragment 31, which circulated widely in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, mocked English poet Ambrose Philips’s well-known translation of Sappho’s “Phainetai moi” ode in order to address concerns over the role of Englishness in the United States. The parodies achieved these political effects by allegorizing their own conditions of print circulation and deflating the cultural associations of fragment 31 and Philips’s translation with the lyric. In this way, these poems were able to address a number of political issues, from English imperialism in Ireland to the specter of English aristocracy in the U.S. federal government. This study of Sappho’s role as a figure for American print circulation in the early nineteenth century also offers a pre-history of the more familiar midcentury association of Sappho with the Poetess. As a figure for the Poetess, Sappho came to embody anxieties over female authors in the marketplace, representing concerns that the public circulation of the Poetess’ work and the promiscuous circulation of her body were one and the same. This essay tells the rich backstory to these more familiar concepts, tracing Sappho’s earlier entanglements with print circulation and the political and cultural functions she served.

Free Civil Legal Assistance in the United States, 1863–1980

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felice Batlan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Assistance ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
Historical Scholarship ◽  
Legal Advice ◽  
The Poor ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

Legal aid organizations were first created by a variety of private groups during the Civil War to provide legal advice in civil cases to the poor. The growing need for legal aid was deeply connected to industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. A variety of groups created legal aid organizations in response to labor unrest, the increasing number of women in the workforce, the founding of women’s clubs, and the slow and incomplete professionalization of the legal bar. In fact, before women could practice law, or were accepted into the legal profession, a variety of middle-class women’s groups using lay lawyers provided legal aid to poor women. Yet, this rich story of women’s work was later suppressed by leaders of the bar attempting to claim credit for legal aid, assert a monopoly over the practice of law, and professionalize legal assistance. Across time, the largest number of claims brought to legal aid providers involved workers trying to collect wages, domestic relations cases, and landlord tenant issues. Until the 1960s, legal aid organizations were largely financed through private donations and philanthropic organizations. After the 1960s, the federal government provided funding to support legal aid, creating significant controversy among lawyers, legal aid providers, and activists as to what types of cases legal aid organizations could take, what services could be provided, and who was eligible. Unlike in many other countries or in criminal cases, in the United States there is no constitutional right to have free counsel in civil cases. This leaves many poor and working-class people without legal advice or access to justice. Organizations providing free civil legal services to the poor are ubiquitous across the United States. They are so much part of the modern legal landscape that it is surprising that little historical scholarship exists on such organizations. Yet the history of organized legal aid, which began during the Civil War, is a rich story that brings into view a unique range of historical actors including women’s organizations, lawyers, social workers, community organizations, the state and federal government, and the millions of poor clients who over the last century and a half have sought legal assistance. This history of the development of legal aid is also very much a story about gender, race, professionalization, the development of the welfare state, and ultimately its slow dismantlement. In other words, the history of legal aid provides a window into the larger history of the United States while producing its own series of historical tensions, ironies, and contradictions. Although this narrative demonstrates change over time and various ruptures with the past, there are also important continuities in the history of free legal aid. Deceptively simple questions have plagued legal aid for almost a century and have also driven much of the historical scholarship on legal aid. These include: who should provide legal aid services, who should receive free legal aid, what types of cases should legal aid organizations handle, who should fund legal aid, and who benefits from legal aid.

scholarly journals AN ASSESSMENT OF THE FRAMEWORK FOR BUILDING A PRO BONO CULTURE AMONG LEGAL PRACTITIONERS IN NIGERIA

2021 ◽  
pp. 13-26
Author(s):  
Ifeanyi Nnadi Henry, Esq. ◽  
◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
Professional Services ◽  
Equal Access ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Pro Bono ◽  
Administrative Framework

Pro bono legal services are professional services rendered by lawyers or other legal experts1 to indigent and disadvantaged litigants in the society for the public good id est, in order to promote a just and equitable society. It is a subset of the principle of equal access to justice and is based on the assumption that the poor requires but cannot access justice because they lack the financial means. Using the doctrinal approach, this discourse assesses the existing legal and administrative framework for pro bono engagement by lawyers in Nigeria with a view to identifying areas of improvement. Having identified possible areas of improvement, recommendations are proffered on legislative and administrative measures towards improving the level of engagement in pro bono legal services by legal practitioners in the country.

Understanding Public Perceptions of Growing Economic Inequality

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
William W. Franko
Keyword(s):  
Income Inequality ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
The Public ◽  
Income Disparities ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Rich

While most Americans appear to acknowledge the large gap between the rich and the poor in the United States, it is not clear whether the public is aware of recent changes in income inequality. Even though economic inequality has grown substantially in recent decades, studies have shown that the public’s perception of growing income disparities has remained mostly unchanged since the 1980s. This research offers an alternative approach to evaluating how public perceptions of inequality are developed. Centrally, it conceptualizes the public’s response to growing economic disparities by applying theories of macro-political behavior and place-based contextual effects to the formation of aggregate perceptions about income inequality. It is argued that most of the public relies on basic information about the economy to form attitudes about inequality and that geographic context—in this case, the American states—plays a role in how views of income disparities are produced. A new measure of state perceptions of growing economic inequality over a 25-year period is used to examine whether the public is responsive to objective changes in economic inequality. Time-series cross-sectional analyses suggest that the public’s perceptions of growing inequality are largely influenced by objective state economic indicators and state political ideology. This research has implications for how knowledgeable the public is of disparities between the rich and the poor, whether state context influences attitudes about inequality, and what role the public will have in determining how expanding income differences are addressed through government policy.

Verán ustedes las chozas más humildes. El discurso de pobreza en la diplomacia pública cardenista dirigida a Estados Unidos

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-281
Author(s):  
Sylvia Dümmer Scheel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Government ◽  
Lazaro Cardenas ◽  
The New Deal

El artículo analiza la diplomacia pública del gobierno de Lázaro Cárdenas centrándose en su opción por publicitar la pobreza nacional en el extranjero, especialmente en Estados Unidos. Se plantea que se trató de una estrategia inédita, que accedió a poner en riesgo el “prestigio nacional” con el fin de justificar ante la opinión pública estadounidense la necesidad de implementar las reformas contenidas en el Plan Sexenal. Aprovechando la inusual empatía hacia los pobres en tiempos del New Deal, se construyó una imagen específica de pobreza que fuera higiénica y redimible. Ésta, sin embargo, no generó consenso entre los mexicanos. This article analyzes the public diplomacy of the government of Lázaro Cárdenas, focusing on the administration’s decision to publicize the nation’s poverty internationally, especially in the United States. This study suggests that this was an unprecedented strategy, putting “national prestige” at risk in order to explain the importance of implementing the reforms contained in the Six Year Plan, in the face of public opinion in the United States. Taking advantage of the increased empathy felt towards the poor during the New Deal, a specific image of hygienic and redeemable poverty was constructed. However, this strategy did not generate agreement among Mexicans.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Travis D. Stimeling
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Country Music ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Music Culture ◽  
Rich Variety ◽  
Ethnographic Studies ◽  
Folklore Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich

This chapter offers a historiographic survey of country music scholarship from the publication of Bill C. Malone’s “A History of Commercial Country Music in the United States, 1920–1964” (1965) to the leading publications of the today. Very little of substance has been written on country music recorded since the 1970s, especially when compared to the wealth of available literature on early country recording artists. Ethnographic studies of country music and country music culture are rare, and including ethnographic methods in country music studies offers new insights into the rich variety of ways in which people make, consume, and engage with country music as a genre. The chapter traces the influence of folklore studies, sociology, cultural studies, and musicology on the development of country music studies and proposes some directions for future research in the field.

scholarly journals On Professors and Poor People—A Jurisprudential Memoir

2007 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 527-543
Author(s):  
Robert E. Rodes
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Public Agency ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Low Degree ◽  
Preferential Option ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Security Deposits

But let the brother of low degree glory in his high estate: and the rich, in that he is made low.—James 1:9-10I am starting this paper after looking at the latest of a series of e-mails regarding people who cannot scrape up the security deposits required by the local gas company to turn their heat back on. They keep shivering in the corners of their bedrooms or burning their houses down with defective space heaters. The public agency that is supposed to relieve the poor refuses to pay security deposits, and the private charities that pay deposits are out of money. A bill that might improve matters has passed one House of the Legislature, and is about to die in a committee of the other House. I have a card on my desk from a former student I ran into the other day. She works in the field of utility regulation, and has promised to send me more e-mails on the subject. I also have a pile of student papers on whether a lawyer can encourage a client illegally in the country to marry her boyfriend in order not to be deported.What I am trying to do with all this material is exercise a preferential option for the poor. I am working at it in a large, comfortable chair in a large, comfortable office filled with large, comfortable books, and a large—but not so comfortable—collection of loose papers. At the end of the day, I will take some of the papers home with me to my large, comfortable, and well heated house.

scholarly journals “Ag-Gag” Laws: Evolution, Resurgence, and Public Health Implications

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 664-682 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caitlin A. Ceryes ◽  
Christopher D. Heaney
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Health ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Animal Production ◽  
Public Access ◽  
State Laws ◽  
The Public ◽  
Food Animal ◽  
Health Community ◽  
History Of

The term “ag-gag” refers to state laws that intentionally limit public access to information about agricultural production practices, particularly livestock production. Originally created in the 1990s, these laws have recently experienced a resurgence in state legislatures. We discuss the recent history of ag-gag laws in the United States and question whether such ag-gag laws create a “chilling effect” on reporting and investigation of occupational health, community health, and food safety concerns related to industrial food animal production. We conclude with a discussion of the role of environmental and occupational health professionals to encourage critical evaluation of how ag-gag laws might influence the health, safety, and interests of day-to-day agricultural laborers and the public living proximal to industrial food animal production.

scholarly journals Shaken Baby Syndrome: A South African Medico-Legal Perspective

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 1316
Author(s):  
Andra Le Roux-Kemp
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Shaken Baby Syndrome ◽  
Abusive Head Trauma ◽  
The United States ◽  
Diagnostic Significance ◽  
Legal Professionals ◽  
The Public ◽  
Awareness Campaigns ◽  
Legal Perspective ◽  
Based Medicine

Shaken Baby Syndrome refers to the violent and repetitive shaking of an infant, and is a form of abusive head trauma. It was first described in 1974, and has since been the topic of intensive study and discussion. The syndrome has classically been diagnosed with a triad of injuries, namely subdural haemorrhage, retinal haemorrhage and encephalopathy (brain abnormalities). However, recent publications have led to some doubt regarding the causation and diagnostic significance of the triad. It is now generally accepted that other conditions, even natural diseases, may cause the findings listed in the so-called "triad". To date, no reported case law is available on Shaken Baby Syndrome in South Africa; therefore this article focuses on cases in the United States and United Kingdom to delineate some of the issues associated with litigating the condition. This includes the obligation of expert witnesses to give independent, factual evidence about their areas of expertise. It is recommended that medical and legal professionals involved in cases of alleged child abuse should collect as much information as possible about the context of the case. Confessions by parents or caregivers should be treated with circumspection. Awareness campaigns should be aimed at informing the public of the dangers of shaking an infant. And with regards to Shaken Baby Syndrome an increased focus on evidence-based medicine is necessary to dissipate the uncertainty around the condition.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document