ABA President: Legal Aid Cuts Would Not Only Impact Most Vulnerable but Would Also “Trickle Up” to Affect Middle Class and Small Business Owners
Stephen N. Zack, “Justice in Jeopardy,” The Hill’s Congress Blog, March 17, 2011
ABA President Stephan Zack writes in the Hill’s Congress Blog:
“The words ‘equal justice under law’ are so fundamental to our culture they’re carved in stone above the entrance to the United States Supreme Court. But today, the opportunity to access justice in our courts is becoming as much a luxury as a Louis Vuitton bag. Funding of the justice system is an uneven patchwork that leads to unequal delivery of justice and is highly vulnerable during hard economic times. Legal aid to the poor, already anemic, is threatened with huge new federal cuts. And the justice gap is trickling up to the middle class and small business.
The problems outlined at the first national hearing of the ABA Task Force on the Preservation of the Justice System sounded like a report from a third world country. The state court funding crisis stretches coast to coast. There are courts begging for pens because their office supply budget is so low. Other courts are demanding that filers bring their own paper. Some are moving so slowly on basic, important matters like child custody, that the child becomes an adult before the case is resolved. The problem affects every region, every size state, and it doesn’t matter if the state is red or blue. Most state courts are funded at less than two percent of the entire state budget. Less than two percent for what the founders insisted be a third, co-equal branch of government. This is appalling. And access to justice will worsen if Congress slashes its funding of Legal Services Corporation, the go-to provider of civil legal help for poor and working class Americans. Right now, proposals are on the table to cut legal aid for the rest of this year by $70 million.
These are people dealing with issues like eviction, domestic violence, and unpaid child support. Legal aid providers tell us that many of their clients are people they’ve never seen before–the new poor, the newly struggling due to long-term unemployment. Legal aid lawyers stand between these people and total financial and legal disaster. We need Congress to act now and make it clear that legal aid is simply off limits in this economy. The ABA also is deeply concerned about the increasing inability of average Americans to access justice. More than 7,500 lawyers and judges recently participated in an ABA survey. The overwhelming majority of respondents said that there are significant barriers to accessing courts and almost all of them (94 percent) cite affordability as a culprit. Some 88 percent of those respondents believe that cost is now holding back middle class clients from pursuing legal issues, and 78 percent believe small businesses are increasingly unable to obtain speedy, reasonably affordable justice. Delays caused by funding-starved court operations are reportedly driving the increase in litigation costs.
It also must be financially viable for young lawyers to deliver the legal services our friends and neighbors need. The ABA is working to help law students make wise financial choices so they can be our next generation of ‘main street’ lawyers. Federal loan forgiveness programs for those pursuing lower-paying careers as prosecutors, defenders, and legal aid providers also are crucial.”