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Public Interest Law & Policy
Ronald W. StaudtAugust 25, 2009
Public Interest Law & Policy Course organization
Course Website Course Information Grading & Attendance Policy Case Studies Assignments Waiting for Gautreaux
What is Public Interest Law?
What is public interest law? Clinical legal education
Low Income Taxpayer Clinic… Lori Andrew’s cases Bart Brown, Bernadette Atuahene
and Hank Perritt’s international efforts
Dan Tarlock’s environmental work Marty Malin’s law and the workplace
What is public interest law?
Public Interest Law & Policy What is Public Interest Law?
New Lawyers- - Student Note - -1970
Rabin’s article-- 1976
Southworth’s study of the right--2005
New Lawyers- Student Note 1970
Angry despair 1930s v 1970---2009? Lloyd Cutler v. Ralph Nader Note 3 definition?
process v. “preferred interests and groups”
Lawyers for Social Change- 1976
1965- all institutions under fire –Civil Rights, Vietnam
Rabin’s inquiry -- change through litigation-but not criminal defense or OEO
Definitions: subsidized attorney services
Nature of practice v. source of funds for lawyer ACLU, LDF, Sierra Club, NRDC, MALDEF
consumer representation? broad societal majoritarian views?
process definition-under represented but selective about interests they choose.
Conservative Lawyers. . . Southworth’s study -2005
Emergence of Liberal PILFs ACLU & LDF powerless minorities New PILFs --diffuse majorities
Look like law firms Not dependent on fees Critiques of legal profession in ’60s-
Nader, Halpern—lawyers self interest at odds with public interest
Nader’s View of Lawyers in 1969
Top Law Students Reject Private Practice
Conservative PILFs. . . Southworth’s study
Late ’60s Amer. for Effective Law Enforcement Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation Catholic League & Nat’l Right to Life Committee
1971-- Powell’s memo
Mid ’70s Pacific Legal Foundation Mid America Legal Foundation Washington Legal Foundation Federalist Society for Law…
’80s and ’90s dozens of new conservative PILF’s
Two more perspectives “…alienation and anxiety about
the nature of lawyering work do not affect all lawyers equally. For those whose idea and practice of lawyering involves service to a cause, many of the symptoms of alienation and anxiety are absent.” Scheingold and Sarat, Something to Believe In, Stanford
U. Press, 2004.
Two more perspectives “American courts are not all-powerful
institutions. They were designed with severe limitations and placed in a political system of divided powers. To ask them to produce significant social reform is to forget their history and ignore their constraints. It is to cloud our vision with a naive and romantic belief in the triumph of right over politics. And while romance and even naivete have their charms, they are not best exhibited in courtrooms.”
Gerald N. Rosenberg, The Hollow Hope, Can Court Bring About Social Change? 2d Edition. U of C Press, 2008