Public Interest Law & Policy
Class 2
Ronald W. Staudt
August 27, 2009
Public Interest Law & Policy
What is Public Interest Law?
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New Lawyers- - Student Note - -1970
Rabin’s article-- 1976
Southworth’s study of the right--2005
Waiting for Gautreaux, pages 1-47
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
Waiting for Gautreaux
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Early public interest work as ACLU pro
bono volunteer- Tropic of Cancer,
Waukegan schools, Anastopolo
“Litigation-an effective lever for social
change!”
Waiting for Gautreaux
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History of post Civil War Jim Crow
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Migration North after 2 wars
Brown in 1954
Rosa Parks, CORE, SCLC, I Have a Dream!
Montgomery & Voting Rights Act
Segregation & violence in the North
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Dual housing markets, racial covenants and
violent confinement– ghetto impact
Waiting for Gautreaux
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Dream Team
6 months of study & research
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Key response by HUD to West Side
Federation – preferences + City council
opposition!
History of Public Housing in 1930s –
segregated
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Taylor & Wood after WWII
More ghetto buildings in pipeline
Waiting for Gautreaux
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“Find us some plaintiffs”
Marches and Deals
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Martin Luther King, Al Raby, Jesse Jackson
and Richard Daley.
Chicago Freedom Movement
Leadership Council
Great Negotiation
Regrets
Leadership Council for
Metropolitan Open Communities
CHA promise
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CHA recognizes that heavy concentrations of
public housing should not again be built in
the City of Chicago…In the future it will seek
scattered sites for public housing and will
limit the height of new public housing
structures in high density areas to eight
stories, with housing for families with children
limited to the first two stories. Whenever
possible, smaller units will be built.