Religious Values, Legal Ethics, and Poverty Law: A Response to Thomas Shaffer

Stephen Wizner provides a response to Thomas Shaffer\u27s article on his pursuit of social justice through using religious figures as role models. Wizner argues that Shaffer is clearly right in asserting that there is much in the prophetic literature, and, indeed, in the entire Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, that could serve as a moral impetus for social justice lawyering. One can find considerable support for Shaffer\u27s religious thesis in the texts that he cites, and in the words of the prophets he looks to as role models. Nevertheless, Wizner presents a skeptical response to Professor Shaffer\u27s thoughtful essay. He argues for skepticism for using religion as a blueprint for what is to be done in law

Measuring Justice

The research imperative of refining ways to measure justice is important and necessary. Our work as lawyers improves the more we know about our effectiveness and the more our choices are evidence based. Nevertheless, quantifying the work of a lawyer is not easy. How do we ensure that any measure of justice captures outcomes for both trial-based advocacy and non-trial-based advocacy on behalf of clients, including negotiated outcomes? How do we quantify the role lawyers play in listening to our clients, explaining the systems in which they operate, and supporting them through often very difficult times in their lives? How do we ensure that any measure of justice includes a client’s sense of the process as well as the outcome? How do we make sure that what we measure does not suggest the limits of what is possible or desired

Teaching and Doing: The Role of Law School Clinics in Enhancing Access to Justice

This Essay revisits the issue of the role that law school clinics can, and should play, in expanding access to justice. To do so we need to cast a critical eye on what we do, who we are, what we have become, and whether we need to rediscover, redefine, and reimagine our professional role as law school clinical teachers

Rationing Justice

A national survey of economically disadvantaged Americans, conducted prior to recent reductions in and restrictions on government-funded legal services programs, found that 80% of the legal problems of the poor were handled without legal assistance. Undoubtedly, the current reductions and restrictions have only made matters worse. The widespread and pervasive denial of legal assistance to the poor has profound political and moral implications for our social order. In his classic study Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that [s]carcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question. He further asserted that in the United States the power of lawyers extends over the whole community

Walking the Clinical Tightrope: Between Teaching and Doing

The University of Maryland School of Law has made a truly remarkable commitment to clinical legal education. The purpose of this conversation is, first, to acknowledge and describe tensions that are inherent in our dual roles as teachers and legal services providers, and, second, to think about the role that law school clinical programs can play in expanding access to justice for unprivileged and underserved clients and communities. Although these remarks are given in celebration of thirty years of clinical legal education at the University of Maryland, we are also here to talk about the role that law school clinics can and should play in expanding access to justice

The Child and the State: Adversaries in the Juvenile Justice System

When the child and the state confront each other in the juvenile justice system, no amount of benevolent intentions, studied informality, or euphemistic terminology should be allowed to obscure the fact that they are, in fact, adversaries. What is at stake in juvenile delinquency proceedings is the child\u27s right to liberty and his right to continue in the custody of his parents against the state\u27s power to control crime and enforce morality. Despite this fact, the juvenile justice system created by legislation in virtually every state was empowered to disregard customary procedures for protecting the accused from the power of the state. It was allowed to employ instead a non-adversary, rehabilitative, parental approach in treating children, both those charged with special juvenile offenses (e.g., incorrigibility, truancy) and those charged with offenses criminal for adults

Is Learning To Think Like a Lawyer Enough?

In 1850 Abraham Lincoln offered the following advice to new law students: There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest... [T]he impression is common, almost universal. Let no young [person) choosing the law for a calling for a moment yield to the popular belief-resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. Choose some other occupation, rather than one in the choosing of which you do, in advance, consent to be a knave