Expect Our Banana Republic-Like Access to Justice to Get Worse

Not long ago, an independent group showed that the access to justice for the average American rivaled that of a banana republic. And no one is making much of an effort to fix that problem. As DDay reported last week, while the Dodd-Frank bill authorized $35 million to support legal services, no one has appropriated it (and the folks about to take over the House aren’t likely to do so anytime soon).

Unfortunately, the one guy in the Obama Administration tasked to do something about that problem, Lawrence Tribe, is about to leave.

After nine months as the Justice Department’s “senior counselor for access to justice,” Laurence H. Tribe, a prominent Harvard law professor and mentor to President Obama, will leave his position and return to Massachusetts early next month.

[snip]

During Mr. Tribe’s brief tenure, he traveled around the country meeting with judges, prosecutors, public defenders, and legal aid workers, in an effort to find places where access to the justice system could be improved for ordinary people. He said he was pleased with the ways his office had found “to create a much more energized network, even though the problems are pervasive and cannot be transformed overnight.”

In partnership with other agencies, Mr. Tribe’s office pushed programs to increase training and collect more data about indigent defense, use the Internet to expand legal services to poor people in rural areas, strengthen legal services for victims of domestic violence, and expand mediation as an alternative to lawsuits for people involved in foreclosures.

Mind you, Tribe is not leaving because he’s disgruntled with the Administration. Rather, he’s returning to get medical care for a problem that has recurred.

Still, at a time when one of the only forces keeping the banksters from running roughshod over the private property of a bunch of real people is a bunch of legal services lawyers, the loss of Tribe comes at a terrible time.

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  1. MadDog says:

    At least somebody can still get justice – via MSNBC:

    Gitmo detainee cleared of all but 1 count in civilian court

    The first Guantanamo detainee to face a civilian trial has been acquitted in New York City of all but one charge accusing him of a deadly 1998 plot to bomb two U.S. embassies in Africa.

    A Manhattan jury deliberated over seven days before finding Ahmed Ghailani guilty of just one count of conspiracy. He was acquitted of multiple other counts including murder and murder conspiracy…

    • MadDog says:

      CBS’s Bob Orr reported during the Katie Couric’s evening broadcast that Ghailani conviction could have up 20 year to life sentence though he insisted that if Ghailani got the minimum 20, it would still be likely that the US would still permanently detain him after completion of a 20 year sentence.

      This seems to confirm the US government has a generations-long view of the endless GWOT.

  2. b2020 says:

    A terrible loss – because he traveled, and energized the network.

    Sanity check: no self-respecting citizen, esp. a member of the legal profession, would want to be associated with Bygones Habeas Obama.

    Hence, somebody who did not quit when it mattered likely never mattered, and certainly never will.

  3. thatvisionthing says:

    As DDay reported last week, while the Dodd-Frank bill authorized $35 million to support legal services, no one has appropriated it (and the folks about to take over the House aren’t likely to do so anytime soon).

    Like, couldn’t the Dems still appropriate the $? And empower individuals to do what the government hasn’t got the nerve or wisdom to do, e.g., go after the fraudster banksters, one by one? I kind of hate to hear “solutions” from the top down, whether from feds or state AGs, because they seem to subsume individual rights and paper things over for the banks yet again. It’s layers of papered over papered over paper already and it just gets muckier.