In the very earliest days of “Legal Services for the Poor” I had an opportunity to visit a Legal Services Center which 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 which 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”!
This, immediately after creating a more perfect union, the founders of our country listed justice as the first purpose of their 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 did not 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 8:00am, 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 9:00am, 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 20s and 30s—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 U.S. Supreme Court and they won them all! It was unprecedented! How these young lawyers, some only in their 20s, 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 which 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 that state couldn’t get on 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 manners. Otherwise, the progressive, generous states would be flooded by refugees from the more parsimonious states! But these bright young Legal Service lawyers came along and took that case right to the Supreme Court, and won it! That famous decision (Shapiro v. Thompson) cost Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s budget several hundred million dollars a year! But thousands of poor people 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 hears of many others.
Just for the record, this case was the fist 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 from Bill Wirtz, the Secretary of Labor in Kennedy’s and Lyndon Johnson’s Cabinets. He was being bombarded with law suits from our California Rural Legal Assistance Program, one of our 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 CRLA 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 says, 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 pursing 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!” 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, experiences in governments 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 successful 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 1999.
Where do we as citizens of the USA stand today? Have our early efforts in the 1960s achieved nationwide success? Does Justice with a capital letter “J” reign everywhere in our land? The answer to these questions is “No”.
Throughout the 1980s, urged on by Ronald Reagan, the most 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 other attempts to destroy it and all of its initiatives for the poor! But all of our programs together have no 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 me! Which means that I believe I am not wholly “independent” not a creature whose self-interests 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 beliefs that “national survival” and improvement, not national security, depends on communal, common, united effort in which each of us participates with and helps others! A community to which we pledge “our lives, our fortunes and our scared honor”! National security without national community is a narrow-minded dream of the military mind.
Yes, I do believe that I, was 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 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 the people of the USA cannot build structures and precedents necessary for success!
All of you who struggle for Justice please, never forsake the work you do! You are the best guardians of liberty and builders of quality of life for all Americans.
Without you, without the National Center of Poverty Law, our country will never achieve “Equal Justice Under Law”. The Bible itself says:
“…The learned will shine like the brilliance of the firmament… Those who train many in the ways of justice will sparkle like stars for all eternity…” You are those “stars”. Please never lose your sparkle.
