-- Thanks very much, Mike Putney, for your generous introduction ----
-- Michael Moore, Chair of our Chesterfield Smith dinner --
The man who has organized and supervised this magnificent banquet—
-- Congratulations to Marcia Cypen, Executive Director of Legal Services for Greater Miami since 1974!!! (24 years)
-- Fellow Members of the Bar,
-- Ladies and Gentlemen --!!!
In the very earliest days of “Legal Services for the Poor” I had an opportunity to visit a Legal Services Center that had just opened at the University of Detroit Law School. It was run by faculty of the Law School and students. I met a couple there, a man and woman returning from an appearance in a Small Claims Court. The husband was 71 years old, his wife 67. They were accompanied by a law student and teacher who had helped them in court. They had just won a verdict for $68. I asked them how they felt, and the old man looked at me and said:
“Mr. Shriver, this is the first time we have ever won anything, the first time we’ve ever had anyone on our side.” Then tears began to fill his eyes. And he took my hand and kissed it!! (Pause)
I didn’t deserve or earn that kiss. In truth, the old man wasn’t kissing my hand; he was kissing the hand of Justice. Justice that had touched him and his wife for the very first time in their lives!!! Justice . . . one of the most basic necessities for a good society. For without justice, there can be no good society!!
In the preamble to the United States Constitution, before that document refers to domestic tranquility or providing for the common defense, or promoting the general welfare and securing the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity -- before all of that -- the Constitution says, ‘We the people of the United States”, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice!!!
Thus, immediately after creating a more perfect union, the founders of our country listed justice as the first purpose of our new nation! Justice, then, was what the USA was all about. Justice today is what all of us lawyers should be all about!
When I was called upon to create a “War Against Poverty” in 1964, I knew nothing about poverty in the USA. And I certainly don’t claim to have had the vision to include legal services among the array of programs we were putting together. It was a man named Edgar Cahn who had that vision! I was just open-minded enough to read what Edgar had written in his article called, “The War on Poverty": A Civilian Perspective,” in the Yale University Law Journal. It didn’t take five minutes for me to know that his article was profound and extremely important. Adam Yarmolinsky, a great friend of mine, had recommended the article to me; so I asked Adam to get Edgar to talk to us.
The next morning at 8:00 a.m. Edgar came, alone, from his GS-15 slot in the Justice Department . . . He was somewhat small in stature, modest in demeanor, calm and reflective in speech. He impressed me immediately by the clarity and originality of his thought, and by his dedication to the achievement of justice for the poor. On the spot, and before 9:00 a.m., I asked him to leave his well-paid job and join us in creating a new effort to establish justice for those in America who never had had any justice at all!! He accepted the challenge without hesitation. We never discussed salary or titles! Only the vision enthralled us all: Edgar Cahn, Adam Yarmolinsky, and Sargent Shriver.
After we started the Legal Services Program, several things happened that began to change my thinking about government, public service, and even about the legal profession. First of all, it amazed me how quickly things happened in our “Legal Services.” To help us came lawyers -- young, inexperienced, idealistic, but bright, bright, bright young lawyers in their 20’s and 30’s -- eager to take on huge established bureaucracies. There was no doubt about the importance of what they were doing. In the very first year eight of their initiatives went to the Supreme Court; and they won them all! It was unprecedented! How these young lawyers, some only in their twenties, could bring about so many innovations in the law, in such a short period of time, was then and still is a marvel to me.
One of the cases that made a particular impression was the one involving New York State, where there was a residency requirement before poor persons could receive welfare payments. Migrants and others coming into the state couldn’t get on the public welfare rolls for a number of years . . . about five, I believe. I had grown up thinking that the states were well within their rights to establish their own standards in such matters. Otherwise, the progressive, generous states would be flooded by refugees from the more parsimonious states! But these bright young Legal Services lawyers came along and took that case right to the Supreme Court; and won it! That famous decision, (Shapiro vs. Thompson), cost Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s budget several hundred million dollars a year! But thousands of poor persons were helped immeasurably by that decision. And it was young, unspoiled, visionary lawyers who had the freshness of thinking and courage to achieve that victory. They opened my eyes, and the eyes and hearts of many others.
Just for the record, this case was the first ever argued before the U.S. Supreme Court by any Legal Aid or Legal Services lawyer in U.S. history . . . Thank God, we won!!
On another occasion, I got a phone call at O.E.O from Bill Wirtz, the Secretary of Labor in Kennedy’s and in Lyndon Johnson’s Cabinets. He was being bombarded with lawsuits from the California Rural Legal Assistance Program, one of our newest initiatives in “Legal Services for the Poor.” We were contesting the legality of a Labor Department program which imported seasonal, cheap labor from Mexico to harvest fruit crops in California. The young lawyers at CFLA brought suit to require the employment of local labor before importing foreign workers.
So, on the telephone was Bill Wirtz, an excellent Labor lawyer, and law professor, my friend from our Chicago days, when we both worked for Adlai Stevenson. He said to me: -- “Sarge, what the hell are you doing?” (I used to get a lot of “what the hell are you doing?” phone calls in those days.) “You’re preventing my people from doing their jobs,” he said.
I replied, “Bill, are you suggesting that I should try to prevent the Legal Services lawyers from pursuing possible remedies at law on behalf of the poor citizens of California? Legal Services was established to help the poor of our own country before we import foreign cheap workers who are not even citizens of our country!” Finally, after a long, long pause Bill said, “Well, Sarge, I see what you mean,” and he slammed the phone down. And that was the end of the Department of Labor’s protest against “Legal Services for the Poor.”
Bill Wirtz was an exceptional man of great learning in the law, experienced in government, and sensitive to human rights; but he had never really looked at the situation within his own Department from the narrow (if you will) viewpoint of the poor!
These two stories exemplify that no matter how well motivated persons may be, how eager to do the right thing for the poor, we can have our senses dulled over the years. Sometimes we don’t really see the unfairness we are involved in! We need to be shown!! In every society there is a tendency for those getting along successfully not to be sensitive to the human problems the poor confront every day! That’s a universal truth. It was true in Biblical times; it’s true tonight, -- almost everywhere, I believe, on earth, even in 1998.
Where do we as citizens of the USA stand today? Have our early efforts in the 1960’s achieved nationwide success? Does Justice with a capital letter “J” reign everywhere in our land?
The answer to these questions is “No.” Throughout the 1980’s, urged on by Ronald Reagan, our Nation’s most narrow-minded and powerful opponent of “Legal Services for the Poor,” the scope of the national Legal Services Program for the Poor was continuously reduced, the financial resources were cut in half, and leadership of the program was given to incompetent, inexperienced, persons. Reagan tried to kill “Legal Services for the Poor” completely. He zero-budgeted the program!!! But Congress prevented him from achieving his objectives. “Legal Services for the Poor” was able to overcome his and the other various attempts to destroy it and all of its initiatives for the poor! Here in Florida you established one of the best systems in our Nation, but you and most of the other states have done so mostly by establishing financial and management entities which the National Legal Services Corporation has been unable to defeat or overcome. Conspicuous among the most successful Legal Services programs, in our entire nation, is yours here in Florida! So I have come here not only to praise Chesterfield Smith, but also to say to all the world that Florida’s “Legal Services for the Poor” is superb, one of the best programs in all of the fifty States.
But is Florida’s program faultless?
No, it’s not.
But, then, no state program in “Legal Services for the Poor” is faultless. All of our programs together do not reach even 50% of the poor population!
As a lawyer, I believe that our government, my government and your government, and my profession and your profession, have a positive, moral and legal duty to make sure that legal services are available to the poor on an accessible, affordable, regular, dignified basis and, if necessary, even free of charge! Which means that I, as a lawyer, believe that some significant part of my money, time, thought and energy belongs, -- I don’t give it, -- it belongs to others, not just to me! Which means that I believe I am not wholly “independent”, not a creature whose self-interest is paramount, nor a person who must be “Number One” or perish.
Yes, I do believe that we the people of the United States must recapture our belief that national survival and improvement, not national security, depends on a communal, common, united, effort in which each one of us participates with and helps others. A community to which we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor!! National security without national community is a dream of the military mind.
Yes, I do believe that I, as a professional lawyer, have the obligation to join with other professionals and fellow citizens to struggle against poverty caused by unconscionable laws, or even by legalized greed; against pollution of the physical and mental environment; against inequalities in education, health and housing -- against all those and other evils of our society. I must serve, not I should serve, free of charge, if necessary, with groups organized to attack community problems: -- homelessness -- hunger; teenage pregnancy; dissolute conditions; joblessness; loneliness, especially of the old and forgotten population.
“Legal Services” -- by lawyers, is essential to solve community problems in our legalistic society... Without lawyers’ help we cannot build structures and precedents necessary for success! Well, well, well! (Pause)
I’ve just looked at my watch and discovered that the time allotted to me for a speech in honor of our hero, Chesterfield Smith, has already run out!!! Am I going to stop abruptly? No! I’m not. I’m not because I’ve not had time (it’s my own fault) to talk to you, about Chesterfield Smith the man, the human being we honor tonight. Not his exploits, or his law firm, or his many and various successes in life, -- just Chesterfield Smith, the man! So, here goes “Shriver on Smith”!
I’ve met, and often worked with, the Presidents of the USA from FDR to Bill Clinton. Most of them, especially my brother-in-law, Jack Kennedy, have been visionaries like FDR, or heroes of honesty like Harry Truman, or behemoths like Lyndon Johnson. Every one of them was smart enough to have grabbed Chesterfield Smith to work for them! If only they had had that chance! Why? Because everyone of them would have sensed that Chesterfield was 100%, a paragon of honesty, an heroic, far-sighted, sensitive human being eager to serve his fellow citizens, especially those most in need of help! They would have seen and admired his courteous and respectful relationships with women, his eagerness to help younger men and women to fulfill their ambitions, his ability to unite all types of human beings and put them together into combinations, or teams, capable of achieving more together than any one of them could have accomplished alone. And, talk about Southern hospitality and charm, Chesterfield had it, and still does have it all!!!
Gentleman, visionary, compassionate friend; unselfish fighter for the underdogs in our nation; and, most of all, a man involved in all struggles for the common good; a man who has never deceived any man or woman; a man who is, for all of us, an example of what everyone of us, male or female, should be ... !!!
May all of us aspire to become more like Chesterfield. Wouldn’t I, one day love to be acclaimed as a man worthy of the nickname, -- “Chesterfield Shriver”?
Wouldn’t each and every one of us here tonight love that Chesterfield’s name could be coupled with our own last name? Why don’t we, -- all of us here tonight -- start a new organization -- “The Chesterfield Society” -- into which, once a year, the most visionary, competent, unselfish and dedicated lawyers in our country would be selected and enrolled?
Then Chesterfield would live on as he should -- a leading example, nationally, of the kind of lawyer all members of the Bar should be. Hail to you, Chesterfield! May your name and fame live on forever!!!
