scholarly journals Gaining Access to Justice: A Subnational Study of the Public Defender’s Office in Mexico

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 35
Author(s):  
Azul A. Aguiar Aguilar
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
Defense Attorneys ◽  
Legal Representation ◽  
Public Defenders ◽  
The Public ◽  
Reform Implementation ◽  
Public Defense ◽  
The Way

With the transition to democracy, Latin American countries have embarked on implementing judicial reforms to redesign justice-sector institutions and build up the rule of law in the region. Reform efforts included empowe¬ring the courts, granting political independence to the public prosecutor’s office, professionalizing the public defender offices and implementing the accusatory criminal system in justice-sector institutions. To what extent are the reforms tar¬geted at the public defender offices changing the way legal defense is provided? In this article, after discussing a theoretical framework that captures and opera¬tionalizes the concepts of a merit-based career system, an accusatory criminal justice system and effective legal representation, I examine the extent to which the changes of transitioning from an inquisitorial to an adversarial system and from a non-merit-based career system to a merit-based career system have affec¬ted the way legal counsel is provided at subnational public defender offices. To accomplish this, I provide both a de jure and de facto measures (indicators of reform implementation). To identify the de jure indicators, I consulted legal texts (constitutions and secondary laws), and to gauge how the de facto indi¬cators work, I relied on interviews with public defenders, reports and academic documents. I collected 50 interviews with public defense attorneys from three Mexican states: Baja California Sur, Jalisco and Nuevo León. Findings from these states suggest that as reform implementation advances, public defenders have more tools to offer legal representation; more specifically, they are better trained, in addition to having higher salaries, a lower caseload per defender and increased access to forensic services.

scholarly journals Challenges Faced by the Clayton County, Georgia Public Defender’s Office

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 48
Author(s):  
James F. Anderson ◽  
Christine A. VanDross, Esq. ◽  
Kelley Reinsmith-Jones ◽  
Adam H. Langsam
Keyword(s):  
Federal Courts ◽  
Expert Witnesses ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
Legal Representation ◽  
Public Defenders ◽  
The Public ◽  
Adequate Funding ◽  
Sixth Amendment ◽  
Legal Defense ◽  
The U.S

While the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees indigent defendant’s legal representation in state and federal courts, public defenders’ offices are challenged by the lack of resources to represent an endless flow of clients, attract and retain talented counsel, enlist the help of expert witnesses, as well as deliver the best quality defense. This study addresses the daily strain of defending clients who are not always the most cooperative in helping their own defense, but it also reveals the struggles and challenges faced by an urban southern public defender’s office and what changes need to be implemented to improve the public defender system. In the end, this study finds that public defender programs need adequate funding to fully deliver a quality legal defense.

Democratic Justice

Free Justice ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 86-116
Author(s):  
Sara Mayeux
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Defense Attorneys ◽  
The Public ◽  
Criminal Defense ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cold War

In contrast to earlier periods when elite lawyers expressed skepticism of the public defender, this chapter describes the Cold War moment when elite lawyers, like the New York lawyer Harrison Tweed, celebrated the public defender as central to the “American way of life.” By the 1950s, lawyers and political leaders touted the rights that U.S. Constitution afforded to criminal defendants as hallmarks of democracy. These rights were thought to exemplify democratic regard for the individual, in contrast to the state-dominated show trials that symbolized totalitarianism. Within this context, criminal defense attorneys were rhetorically celebrated and the public defender was reframed from a harbinger of socialism into an anticommunist figure. In 1963, the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, further enshrining the constitutional right to counsel. Gideon held that the Sixth Amendment requires states to provide counsel to indigent defendants in all serious felony trials. The decision was celebrated and chronicled in the widely read book by journalist Anthony Lewis, Gideon’s Trumpet, and the Ford Foundation announced ambitious plans for a nationwide initiative to expand public defender offices.

External and internal common legal representation of victims at the International Criminal Court: Beyond the ‘Kenyan trial approach’

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 159-191
Author(s):  
Charles A Khamala
Keyword(s):  
International Criminal Court ◽  
Due Process ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Legal Representation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Mass Atrocity ◽  
Broad Interpretation ◽  
Victim Reparations

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is primarily mandated to punish persons bearing the greatest responsibility for the worst crimes known to mankind. Additionally, its victim reparations are contingent on conviction; because of this, the Rome Statute’s retributive goal is compounded with the inquisitorial function of seeking the truth by realising the victim’s entitlement to participate at appropriate stages throughout the proceedings. However, the suspect’s due process rights must remain protected. While the Court balances these procedural functions, victims’ representatives determine which victims are members of the appropriate constituency. This paper’s theoretical framework shows how victims are vulnerable to their representative’s claims. Therefore, the question arises as to whether external or internal legal representation will be more effective for victims. This determines how victims’ voices may best be elicited. Some victimologists contend that the exclusion of an external Common Legal Representative (CLR) in the search of mass atrocity solutions promotes merely symbolic, rather than meaningful, victim participation in ICC proceedings. The Court insists on external CLRs because of their local knowledge. Others emphasise the proximity of the Office of the Public Counsel for Victims (OPCV) to judges as providing access to justice at The Hague. Crucially, by requiring the OPCV to interface between the external CLR and the Chamber in day-to-day proceedings, the ‘Kenyan trial approach’ has made victims’ participation more meaningful. Yet, following the Ruto and Sang case, the ICC faces challenges when confronted with diverse modalities of implementing reparations for multiple victims. In the Palestine situation, claims seeking to promote victims’ interests required victim empowerment, including strengthening appropriate victim constituencies through outreach to enable them to articulate disagreements with their representatives. In the Ongwen case, a broad interpretation gave victims’ voices enhanced agency over the defence. Recently, in Ntaganda’s case, the Court directed the Registry to liaise not only with the CLRs but also with the Trust Fund for Victims for appropriate outreach and communication with victims.

Making Gideon Count? Public Defender Resources and Felony Case Outcomes for Black, White, and Latinx Individuals

2021 ◽  
pp. 215336872110064
Author(s):  
Aaron Gottlieb
Keyword(s):  
Racial Disparities ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Support Staff ◽  
Sentence Length ◽  
State Court ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Defense ◽  
The Right

Although Gideon v. Wainright has provided indigent defendants potentially facing prison time the right to counsel, commentators and scholars have documented that the public defense system is vastly underfunded and currently in crisis. However, research has rarely examined how public defender resources impact case outcomes, and the research that does exist has yet, to my knowledge, examine how these resources impact racial disparities in case outcomes. By merging data from the Census of Public Defender Offices to data from the State Court Processing Statistics, I begin to fill this gap. Results from multivariate regression analyses with state-year fixed effects provide mixed evidence. Regardless of race, higher public defender and support staff caseloads tend to be associated with worse case outcomes. In the case of pretrial detention, I find that high public defender and support staff caseloads exacerbate Black-White disparities. With respect to sentence length, I find evidence that high public defender caseloads exacerbate Latinx-White disparities and some evidence that they mitigate Black-White disparities. In sum, these results provide strong support for the view that the public defender funding crisis harms indigent defendants regardless of race and mixed evidence regarding its impact on racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

Introduction

Free Justice ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Sara Mayeux
Keyword(s):  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
Criminal Proceedings ◽  
Public Defenders ◽  
The Public ◽  
Indigent Defense ◽  
Private Charity ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The 1960S

Today, thousands of public defenders around the United States represent indigent defendants in criminal proceedings. At a moment of widespread concern about mass incarceration and racial and class inequality, public defenders are seen both as participants in, and adversaries of, the carceral state. The introduction to this book provides an overview of how public defenders became so widespread in American courtrooms. At the turn of the twentieth century, many elite lawyers expressed skepticism about the public defender. They posited that the legal profession should remain independent from the state as much as possible, and that indigent defense was better handled by private charity. They established voluntary defender organizations. But by the 1960s, prevailing views had changed. Many elite lawyers now endorsed the public defender, especially after the Supreme Court decided the landmark case of Gideon v. Wainwright, which expanded the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. The book argues that these developments can be explained by shifts in liberalism and how lawyers conceived of the profession’s place within liberal democracy.

scholarly journals Access to Justice and the Legal Complex: Building a Public Defenders’ Office in Brazil

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-176
Author(s):  
Rodrigo M. Nunes
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
The State ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Public Defenders ◽  
Political Position ◽  
Complex Building

Latin American democracies have developed institutions to empower citizens against the state. This article brings attention to an often overlooked, but key, actor in these processes: the legal complex. I argue that the content of reforms designed to strengthen the rule of law partially reflects the interests of politically influential collective legal actors. Political influence is defined as a function of alliances with civil society and embeddedness within decision-making arenas of the state. To develop this argument, the article analyses the slow building of Brazil’s Public Defenders’ Office (PDO). I argue that the office’s initial institutional weakness resulted from defenders’ fragile political position relative to that of prosecutors and the bar during Brazil’s constitutional transition. Its eventual strengthening sixteen years later resulted from changes to the legal complex alliance in its favour, the formation of connections between defenders and civil society, and increased PDO access to policymaking spaces.

Local Injustice

Free Justice ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 151-180
Author(s):  
Sara Mayeux
Keyword(s):  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Public Defenders ◽  
The Public ◽  
Indigent Defense ◽  
War On Crime ◽  
The Government

With snapshots of Massachusetts and Mississippi, among other examples, this chapter continues to trace how the implementation of Gideon v. Wainwright fell short of expectations in local communities. In particular, it examines some of the efforts funded by the National Defender Project, an initiative of the Ford Foundation and the National Legal Aid and Defender Association (NLADA). This initiative funded the establishment and expansion of public defender offices around the country. Yet many challenges remained. Criminal defendants themselves complained that public defenders did not sufficiently understand their circumstances—spurring new experiments like the “community defender,” a new model of public defender with stronger ties to the neighborhoods where many defendants lived. By the early 1970s, as indigent defense reformers continued to navigate these challenges, the government had declared “War on Crime” and criminal caseloads had begun to rise—early harbingers of the phenomenon later labelled mass incarceration. Over the course of the twentieth century, lawyers had coalesced in theory around the idea of the public defender as a means to guarantee equality in the criminal courts, but remained unsuccessful at fully implementing that idea around the country.

Free Justice

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Mayeux
Keyword(s):  
Legal Profession ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
Public Defenders ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Government ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Right ◽  
Corporate Lawyers

Every day, in courtrooms around the United States, thousands of criminal defendants are represented by public defenders--lawyers provided by the government for those who cannot afford private counsel. Though often taken for granted, the modern American public defender has a surprisingly contentious history--one that offers insights not only about the "carceral state," but also about the contours and compromises of twentieth-century liberalism. First gaining appeal amidst the Progressive Era fervor for court reform, the public defender idea was swiftly quashed by elite corporate lawyers who believed the legal profession should remain independent from the state. Public defenders took hold in some localities but not yet as a nationwide standard. By the 1960s, views had shifted. Gideon v. Wainwright enshrined the right to counsel into law and the legal profession mobilized to expand the ranks of public defenders nationwide. Yet within a few years, lawyers had already diagnosed a "crisis" of underfunded, overworked defenders providing inadequate representation--a crisis that persists today. This book shows how these conditions, often attributed to recent fiscal emergencies, have deep roots, and it chronicles the intertwined histories of constitutional doctrine, big philanthropy, professional in-fighting, and Cold War culture that made public defenders ubiquitous but embattled figures in American courtrooms.

scholarly journals Streetlaw – assisting access to justice in the Employment Tribunal: A practice report

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 50
Author(s):  
Sarah Saunders
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Legal Representation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Barriers To Access ◽  
Previous Edition ◽  
Pro Bono ◽  
Run Up ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Uk

<p>If you have not yet read the judgment of Lord Reed in the Supreme Court decision of Unison v The Lord Chancellor, please allow yourself a little time over the coming weeks to enjoy a clear and evidence-based statement on access to justice in the employment tribunals of England and Wales. The case was brought by Unison, the UK public workers union, and challenged the introduction in July 2013 of the requirement to pay a fee to lodge an employment tribunal claim. Having reviewed some of the key common law authorities and quoting from the Magna Carta and Donoghue v Stevenson no less, Lord Reed concluded that the fee regime was unlawful “because it has the effect of preventing access to justice”. This landmark decision in July 2017 brought an immediate end to the fee regime. Time will tell whether the UK Government will attempt another fee scheme in the future, but there are other more pressing issues occupying Whitehall at the moment.</p><p><br />The four-year fee regime and the Unison challenge brought access to justice in employment tribunals very much into the public eye. Other barriers to access were also widely discussed and reported, including the lack of legal aid and legal representation for claimants in employment law matters. A number of law clinics and pro bono schemes operate to give guidance and advice to the public, in addition to the essential work of ACAS (the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service). The purpose of this paper is to share with you my experience of a university student Streetlaw project at the Cardiff Employment Tribunal providing guidance to unrepresented claimants about tribunal practice and procedure.</p><p><br />The concept of Streetlaw is familiar to readers of this Journal as a form of public legal education aimed at helping members of the public to understand their rights. It is also frequently referred to as “legal literacy”, the importance of which Richard Grimes explains in a previous edition of this Journal. The key aim of our Streetlaw project is to educate potential claimants about what to expect in the run up to their employment tribunal hearing and what happens on the day. As I shall explain, however, there are a number of secondary aims and several other beneficial outcomes.</p>

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