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