Public Interest Law & Policy
Ronald W. Staudt
January 22, 2013
Public Interest Law & Policy
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Course organization
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Course Website
Course Information
Grading & Attendance Policy
Case Studies
Assignments
Waiting for Gautreaux
What is Public Interest Law?
What is public interest law?
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Clinical legal education
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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
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What is Public Interest Law?
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New Lawyers- - Student Note - -1970
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Rabin’s article-- 1976
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Southworth’s study of the right--2005
New Lawyers- Student Note 1970
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Angry despair
1930s v 1970---2009?
Lloyd Cutler v. Ralph Nader
Note 3 definition?
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process v. “preferred interests and
groups”
Lawyers for Social Change- 1976
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1965- all institutions under fire –Civil Rights,
Vietnam
Rabin’s inquiry -- change through litigationbut not criminal defense or OEO
Definitions:
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subsidized attorney services
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ACLU, LDF, Sierra Club, NRDC, MALDEF
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Nature of practice v. source of funds for lawyer
consumer representation?
broad societal majoritarian views?
process definition-under represented but selective
about interests they choose.
Conservative Lawyers. . .
Southworth’s study -2005
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Emergence of Liberal PILFs
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ACLU & LDF powerless minorities
New PILFs --diffuse majorities
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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
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Late ’60s
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Amer. for Effective Law Enforcement
Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation
Catholic League & Nat’l Right to Life Committee
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1971-- Powell’s memo
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Mid ’70s
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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
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“…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
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“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