Legal Deserts: A Multi-State Perspective on Rural Access to Justice

Rural America faces an increasingly dire access-to-justice crisis, which serves to exacerbate the already disproportionate share of social problems afflicting rural areas. One critical aspect of the crisis is the dearth of information and research regarding the extent of the problem and its impacts. This Article begins to fill that gap by providing surveys of rural access to justice in six geographically, demographically, and economically varied states: California, Georgia, Maine, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. In addition to providing insights about the distinct rural challenges confronting each of these states, the legal resources available, and existing policy responses, the Article explores common themes that emerge through this multi-state lens, with particular attention to the rural attorney shortage, thus framing a richer, broader discussion of rural access to justice. Written for a special issue on Revitalizing Rural, this Article ultimately proposes a two-step approach to alleviate rural justice deficits. First, although the information presented here provides a solid foundation, a critical need remains for ongoing, careful, and thoughtful study of the legal needs and lack of legal resources in rural areas. Second, the unique institutional, structural, and demographic characteristics of rural areas will require tailored, innovative, and data-driven solutions to match appropriate legal services with needs. We advocate a re-thinking of the roles of many justice system stakeholders, including the critical steps that legal educators can and should take to help close the rural-urban justice gap. Our hope is that this Article will inform and expand access-to-justice conversations so that they more intentionally address the legal needs of the vast rural reaches of our nation, thus furthering the ultimate goal of realizing access to justice for all Americans

Legal Deserts

Rural America faces an increasingly dire access-to-justice crisis, which serves to exacerbate the already disproportionate share of social problems afflicting rural areas. One critical aspect of the crisis is the dearth of information and research regarding the extent of the problem and its impacts. This Article begins to fill that gap by providing surveys of rural access to justice in six geographically, demographically, and economically varied states: California, Georgia, Maine, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. In addition to providing insights about the distinct rural challenges confronting each of these states, the legal resources available, and existing policy responses, the Article explores common themes that emerge through this multi-state lens, with particular attention to the rural attorney shortage, thus framing a richer, broader discussion of rural access to justice. Written for a special issue on “Revitalizing Rural,” this Article ultimately proposes a two-step approach to alleviate rural justice deficits. First, although the information presented here provides a solid foundation, a critical need remains for ongoing, careful, and thoughtful study of the legal needs and lack of legal resources in rural areas. Second, the unique institutional, structural, and demographic characteristics of rural areas will require tailored, innovative, and data-driven solutions to match appropriate legal services with needs. We advocate a re-thinking of the roles of many justice system stakeholders, including the critical steps that legal educators can and should take to help close the rural-urban justice gap. Our hope is that this Article will inform and expand access-to-justice conversations so that they more intentionally address the legal needs of the vast rural reaches of our nation, thus furthering the ultimate goal of realizing access to justice for all Americans

Limited Relief: Cause Lawyering on Behalf of Unacccompanied Chinese Youth

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2014Each year, approximately 1,500 Chinese youth migrate alone and clandestinely to the U.S. While most intend to advance themselves and their families socially and economically, not all are immediately successful: a number are apprehended and placed in removal proceedings. Here, immigration cause lawyers are tasked with presenting clients who might otherwise be termed "economic migrants" as uniquely vulnerable and deserving of legal status. Drawing on nearly three years of ethnographic research, this dissertation details the goals and responsibilities youth manage through multiple transitions of legality, labor and age alongside attorneys' negotiations of personal motivation and professional constraints. The "cause" that emerges, namely advocacy on behalf of unaccompanied Chinese youth, proves far-reaching and obligatory in largely unconsidered, and I believe unintended, ways. I argue that the lawyers in this study maintain their subjective jurisdiction (Abbott 1988) of this "cause" by constructing Chinese youth as uniquely vulnerable--and their parents as uniquely culpable--through normative narratives of age and morality alongside Orientalist economics and the "spectacular case." Cause lawyers further establish their responsibility and, in a sense, worthiness to "treat" this population of migrants through a rhetoric of care--i.e. by ambiguously conflating "welfare and safety" with legal status, best interest with rights, and guardianship with legal representation. At the same time, however, the actions, expectations and very presence of Chinese clients unsettle these understandings of care. As I evidence, unaccompanied youth challenge presumptions of passivity or dependency by being "overtly agentful" (Coe, et. al 2008) in their management of migration journeys and legal needs. By attending to the legal strategies of attorneys and youth, this dissertation illuminates the limiting choices attorneys make on behalf of a "cause." In so doing, it also points to the limited choices available to immigration cause lawyers, and thus to broader contradictions in the institutional practices, rights frameworks and political ideologies that govern the management and care of unaccompanied young migrants

Shackling sector development: Leased lines in the Republic of South Africa

Rural America faces an increasingly dire access-to-justice crisis, which serves to exacerbate the already disproportionate share of social problems afflicting rural areas. One critical aspect of the crisis is the dearth of information and research regarding the extent of the problem and its impacts. This Article begins to fill that gap by providing surveys of rural access to justice in six geographically, demographically, and economically varied states: California, Georgia, Maine, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. In addition to providing insights about the distinct rural challenges confronting each of these states, the legal resources available, and existing policy responses, the Article explores common themes that emerge through this multi-state lens, with particular attention to the rural attorney shortage, thus framing a richer, broader discussion of rural access to justice. Written for a special issue on Revitalizing Rural, this Article ultimately proposes a two-step approach to alleviate rural justice deficits. First, although the information presented here provides a solid foundation, a critical need remains for ongoing, careful, and thoughtful study of the legal needs and lack of legal resources in rural areas. Second, the unique institutional, structural, and demographic characteristics of rural areas will require tailored, innovative, and data-driven solutions to match appropriate legal services with needs. We advocate a re-thinking of the roles of many justice system stakeholders, including the critical steps that legal educators can and should take to help close the rural-urban justice gap. Our hope is that this Article will inform and expand access-to-justice conversations so that they more intentionally address the legal needs of the vast rural reaches of our nation, thus furthering the ultimate goal of realizing access to justice for all Americans