Blog
Civil Right to Counsel
By Rebekah Diller – 06/20/11
In a mixed result for the rights of indigent parents, the Supreme Court today held that the year-long incarceration of a South Carolina man for failure to pay child support violated the Constitution because adequate safeguards had not been in place to ensure that his failure to pay was willful. However, the Court also ruled that parents facing jail time for failure to pay child support do not have a categorical right to a court-appointed defense attorney when the other parent is unrepresented.
The case, Turner v. Rogers, involved an appeal of an order finding Michael Turner in civil contempt because of his failure to pay child support. At the hearing, Mr. Turner had been unrepresented by counsel and had attempted to explain to the judge why he could not pay his debt. The judge did not make any finding as to Turner’s ability to pay the arrears and nonetheless ordered Turner to serve a year in prison.
Debt collection proceedings not addressed by ruling
At the outset, it’s worth noting that the Court explicitly confined its ruling to cases in which an unrepresented custodial parent brings a petition for civil contempt. The Court appeared especially concerned about the potential for an imbalance of power if those in debt were appointed counsel while those seeking to collect the arrears — often mothers supporting their children — were not.
Thus, the Court did not address the question of whether counsel is required in the vast number of cases involving state agencies seeking to collect past due child support. Nationally, about half the outstanding child support debt is owed to the government, which obtains the right to collect from recipients of welfare benefits.
In addition, the decision did not address situations in which a court uses contempt or other proceedings to enforce court orders to pay fees arising out of criminal cases. A Brennan Center report last year found that out of 15 states studied, 11 had statutes or practices that authorize incarceration for willful failures to pay criminal justice debt, often under the guise of civil contempt.
Nor did the Court address “unusually complicated” cases in which counsel might be necessary to fully flesh out the issues.
Challenges to enforcement
While Turner wisely left these situations for another day, it created a thorny set of implementation questions for the lower courts. Following the suggestion of the Solicitor General, the Court held that due process requires the following alternative procedures before an unrepresented parent can be incarcerated for failing to pay:
- Notice that ability to pay is the issue to be decided;
- A form to elicit information about financial circumstances;
- An opportunity to respond to questions triggered by the form; and
- An express finding by the court that the defendant has the ability to pay.
Such procedures are more than warranted and may well provide sufficient safeguards in a select number of cases. However, while the Supreme Court’s holding is the law of the land, it is unfortunately not self-executing. As my colleague Laura Abel has written, enforcement of these standards will require vigilance by the courts and bar alike.
What happens, for example, when a judge fails to make a finding about ability to pay, as the judge did here? Or when a court fails to make the right inquiries based on the responses to a form? Who will notice?
When counsel isn’t appointed at the outset, it’s all too easy for people to slip through the cracks and languish behind bars, as documented in this Brennan Center report on Florida’s criminal justice debt. Take the case of Rafael E. from Highlands County, Florida, who spent four months in jail several years ago for failing to pay court debts of less than $750, which no judge had ever determined he had the ability to pay. It was only after he happened to come to the attention of the local public defender that his release was secured.
With scant checks in the system, it is hard to take comfort in the procedural changes mandated by the Supreme Court. They will only work if state courts — already struggling with budget cuts and rising caseloads — find time to take extra care in their dealings with those who are unrepresented.
In a mixed result for the rights of indigent parents, the Supreme Court today held that the year-long incarceration of a South Carolina man for failure to pay child support violated the Constitution because adequate safeguards had not been in place to ensure that his failure to pay was willful. However, the Court also ruled that indigent parents did not have a categorical right to a court-appointed defense attorney in child support hearings when the other party is unrepresented.
The case, Turner v. Rogers, involved an appeal of an order finding Michael Turner in civil contempt because of his failure to pay child support. At the hearing, Mr. Turner had been unrepresented by counsel and had attempted to explain to the judge why he could not pay his debt. The judge did not make any finding as to Turner’s ability to pay the arrears and nonetheless ordered Turner to serve a year in prison.
Debt collection proceedings not addressed by ruling
At the outset, it’s worth noting that the Court explicitly confined its ruling to cases in which an unrepresented custodial parent brings a petition for civil contempt. The Court appeared especially concerned about the potential for an imbalance of power if those in debt were appointed counsel while those seeking to collect the arrears — often mothers supporting their children — were not.
Thus, the Court did not address the question of whether counsel is required in the vast number of cases involving state agencies seeking to collect past due child support. Nationally, about half the outstanding child support debt is owed to the government, which obtains the right to collect from recipients of welfare benefits.
In addition, the decision did not address situations in which a court uses contempt or other proceedings to enforce court orders to pay fees arising out of criminal cases. A Brennan Center report last year found that out of 15 states studied, 11 had statutes or practices that authorize incarceration for willful failures to pay criminal justice debt, often under the guise of civil contempt.
Nor did the Court address “unusually complicated” cases in which counsel might be necessary to fully flesh out the issues.
Challenges to enforcement
While Turner wisely left these situations for another day, it created a thorny set of implementation questions for the lower courts. Following the suggestion of the Solicitor General, the Court held that due process requires the following alternative procedures before an unrepresented parent can be incarcerated for failing to pay:
1) Notice that ability to pay is the issue to be decided;
2) A form to elicit information about financial circumstances;
3) An opportunity to respond to questions triggered by the form; and
4) An express finding by the court that the defendant has the ability to pay.
Such procedures are more than warranted and may well provide sufficient safeguards in a select number of cases. However, while the Supreme Court’s holding is the law of the land, it is unfortunately not self-executing. As my colleague Laura Abel has written, enforcement of these standards will require vigilance by the courts and bar alike.
What happens, for example, when a judge fails to make a finding about ability to pay, as the judge did here? Or when a court fails to make the right inquiries based on the responses to a form? Who will notice?
When counsel isn’t appointed at the outset, it’s all too easy for people to slip thro
In a mixed result for the rights of indigent parents, the Supreme Court today held that the year-long incarceration of a South Carolina man for failure to pay child support violated the Constitution because adequate safeguards had not been in place to ensure that his failure to pay was willful. However, the Court also ruled that indigent parents did not have a categorical right to a court-appointed defense attorney in child support hearings when the other party is unrepresented.
The case, Turner v. Rogers, involved an appeal of an order finding Michael Turner in civil contempt because of his failure to pay child support. At the hearing, Mr. Turner had been unrepresented by counsel and had attempted to explain to the judge why he could not pay his debt. The judge did not make any finding as to Turner’s ability to pay the arrears and nonetheless ordered Turner to serve a year in prison.
Debt collection proceedings not addressed by ruling
At the outset, it’s worth noting that the Court explicitly confined its ruling to cases in which an unrepresented custodial parent brings a petition for civil contempt. The Court appeared especially concerned about the potential for an imbalance of power if those in debt were appointed counsel while those seeking to collect the arrears — often mothers supporting their children — were not.
Thus, the Court did not address the question of whether counsel is required in the vast number of cases involving state agencies seeking to collect past due child support. Nationally, about half the outstanding child support debt is owed to the government, which obtains the right to collect from recipients of welfare benefits.
In addition, the decision did not address situations in which a court uses contempt or other proceedings to enforce court orders to pay fees arising out of criminal cases. A Brennan Center report last year found that out of 15 states studied, 11 had statutes or practices that authorize incarceration for willful failures to pay criminal justice debt, often under the guise of civil contempt.
Nor did the Court address “unusually complicated” cases in which counsel might be necessary to fully flesh out the issues.
Challenges to enforcement
While Turner wisely left these situations for another day, it created a thorny set of implementation questions for the lower courts. Following the suggestion of the Solicitor General, the Court held that due process requires the following alternative procedures before an unrepresented parent can be incarcerated for failing to pay:
1) Notice that ability to pay is the issue to be decided;
2) A form to elicit information about financial circumstances;
3) An opportunity to respond to questions triggered by the form; and
4) An express finding by the court that the defendant has the ability to pay.
Such procedures are more than warranted and may well provide sufficient safeguards in a select number of cases. However, while the Supreme Court’s holding is the law of the land, it is unfortunately not self-executing. As my colleague Laura Abel has written, enforcement of these standards will require vigilance by the courts and bar alike.
What happens, for example, when a judge fails to make a finding about ability to pay, as the judge did here? Or when a court fails to make the right inquiries based on the responses to a form? Who will notice?
When counsel isn’t appointed at the outset, it’s all too easy for people to slip through the cracks and languish behind bars, as documented in this Brennan Center report on Florida’s criminal justice debt. Take the case of Rafael E. from Highlands County, Florida, who spent four months in jail several years ago for failing to pay court debts of less than $750. It was only after he happened to come to the attention of the local public defender that his release was secured.
With scant checks in the system, it is hard to take comfort in the procedural changes mandated by the Supreme Court. They will only work if state courts — already struggling with budget cuts and rising caseloads — find time to take extra care in their dealings with those who are unrepresented.
ugh the cracks and languish behind bars, as documented in this Brennan Center report on Florida’s criminal justice debt. Take the case of Rafael E. from Highlands County, Florida, who spent four months in jail several years ago for failing to pay court debts of less than $750. It was only after he happened to come to the attention of the local public defender that his release was secured.
With scant checks in the system, it is hard to take comfort in the procedural changes mandated by the Supreme Court. They will only work if state courts — already struggling with budget cuts and rising caseloads — find time to take extra care in their dealings with those who are unrepresented.
Tags: Justice, Civil Justice, Civil Right to Counsel
By Laura Klein Abel – 06/20/11
In a partial victory for indigent parents, the Supreme Court today held that the year-long incarceration of a South Carolina man for failure to pay child support violated the Constitution. However, the Court also ruled that, when the other party is unrepresented, indigent parents do not have a categorical right to a court-appointed defense attorney in child support hearings. The Brennan Center, with four other civil rights groups, submitted an amicus brief detailing why providing counsel in these civil proceedings is essential to preventing wrongful incarceration.
Crossposted at Concurring Opinions.
Turner v. Rogers could be yet another in a long line of opinions papering over the difficulties regular folks have defending their rights without a lawyer. Or it could be a force for making the court system more user friendly. In Turner, the Court requires the lower courts to assess the adequacy of the proceedings in civil contempt cases in which personal liberty may be at stake. But how is a court to do that? According to Turner, it must: 1) provide notice that the ability to pay is a critical issue, 2) use “a form (or the equivalent) to elicit relevant financial information, 3) allow the defendant to respond to questions about his financial status, and 4) make an express finding that the defendant has the ability to pay.
So many questions must be answered. What sort of “form”? Many parents who owe child support never obtained a high school diploma. Does the form have to be written in plain English that can be understood by people with little education? What sort of form would suffice for an illiterate parent?
The Court says that the form must “elicit relevant financial information.” How detailed must it be? Who decides what financial information is “relevant”? What if the form does not ask about important factors, such as whether the defendant has unusually high health care expenses?
The Court says that there must be opportunity, at a hearing, for the defendant to respond to statements and questions about his financial status. What constitutes an adequate “opportunity . . . to respond”? What if the questions are phrased in legalese? What if the defendant did not know of his obligation to bring to the hearing documents to support his defenses – copies of job applications, for instance? Must the judge explain that requirement to the defendant and continue the hearing to allow him to gather the documents? If the defendant speaks only Spanish, must an interpreter be supplied?
These are not easy questions to answer. Yet the lower courts must answer them in order to ensure that counsel is provided whenever the civil contempt procedures are inadequate to ensure due process. Ironically, because most civil contempt defendants appear without counsel, in most cases the lower courts will have to assess the adequacy of their procedures without the assistance of counsel. This would seem to be precisely the sort of “unusually complex” question that the Turner majority acknowledged requires the involvement of “a trained advocate.”
There could be salutary results. Ideally, lower courts will develop better forms for pro se litigants, open pro se assistance centers, and educate their judges and court staff about how to work with pro se litigants, particularly those who have low literacy, limited proficiency in English, and other special needs. This will help the courts operate more accurately and efficiently. It will improve litigants’ experience with the courts, and enhance the public’s trust in the legal system.
But without close scrutiny by the courts and the bar, this could all be a farce. To satisfy the Turner opinion, the proceedings that the courts implement must truly allow unrepresented parents to demonstrate their inability to pay. Civil legal aid lawyers are familiar with the obstacles their clients face in accessing the court system. They need adequate funding to enable them to monitor the proceedings in their jurisdictions. Bar associations and local law schools should play a monitoring role, too. It is time to get to work.
Tags: Justice, Civil Justice, Civil Right to Counsel
By Brennan Center for Justice – 05/03/10
In a speech given May 3, the Hon. Jonathan Lippman, chief judge of the NY Court of Appeals, proposed a 'Civil Gideon' program, one which would provide right to counsel in New York State for the indigent in cases involving basic human needs. According to a 2008 study by Brennan Center counsel Laura Abel, every year least 80% of the civil legal needs of low-income New Yorkers go unmet, and the majority of these concern core issues such as housing, child custody, food, employment, and health. Judge Lippman plans to set up statewide hearings to assess legal needs. The NY Times has more background.
Tags: Justice, Civil Legal Aid, Civil Right to Counsel
By Kelly Williams – 11/24/09
"... we turn away from it at our peril.”
--Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on the Constitution, during the Second Annual Living Constitution Lecture, 11/20/2009, at NYU School of Law
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) delivered the Brennan Center’s Second Annual Living Constitution Lecture to a packed crowd in Greenberg Lounge at New York University School of Law. After a welcoming reception that featured the cuisine and libations of Rhode Island, Brennan Center Executive Director Michael Waldman introduced the pro-democracy evening. Katherine vanden Heuvel, editor-in-chief of The Nation, introduced Senator Whitehouse and moderated a Q&A following his remarks.
The Center’s Living Constitution Project brings together thinkers and policymakers to further a progressive interpretation of the Constitution. Senator Whitehouse, a member of the Judiciary and Intelligence committees, started his speech by noting that the Constitution is “a beacon of light” to citizens of the world and that, to protect its great principles, there must be respect for the rule of law and procedures “well down” the ranks of executive branch officials and the lawyers who interpret and enforce our laws. He pointed to the “litter of mischief” that resulted from torture memos written by lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel during the last Bush Administration as a consequence of a turn away from a proper understanding of the principles that have made us strong and secure as a nation.
The Senator warned that the Constitution, the foundation of our democracy at home, faces grave threats in the form of widespread efforts to meddle with access to the ballot box by engaging in “electioneering games that trick voters into not participating.” Another looming threat is the pending Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, which might unleash corporations from the bounds of government by allowing corporations to tap their great accumulations of wealth to influence elections. In a lighter moment, he suggested that the only way to resolve this might be to muster a Constitutional amendment providing that only human beings can participate in the political process.
The Senator’s third concern springs from threats to the civil justice system. He argued that corporations have waged a successful war on our civil justice system and have won battles for mandatory arbitration systems and strict interpretations of statutes of limitations. The Constitution mandates trial by jury no less than three times, but in recent years we have witnessed persistent and successful efforts to erode and deride this right.
Finally, the Senator expressed concern for the promise of economic well-being that is embodied in the Constitution. He argued that the framers had a simple goal: to allow Americans to live freely and without government interference; but, for the past decade, progress on the economic front has not kept pace with the Constitution’s equally important promise of equality and justice. Economic disparities – widened by laws including those that allow reduced capital gains tax treatment of carried interest by hedge fund managers (15% rather than 36%, if deemed ordinary income) – erode this promise. And allowing executive compensation to be “taken” by the government under its TARP program without due process is a dangerous precedent, no matter how unsympathetic well-paid financial industry executives might seem at the moment.
Read the entire lecture by Senator Whitehouse here.
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Justice, Civil Justice, Civil Legal Aid, Civil Right to Counsel
By Laura MacCleery – 06/16/09
Cross-post from CityLimits.org
Negotiating Justice: Progressive Lawyering,
Low-Income Clients, and the Quest for Social Change, by Corey S.
Shdaimah, NYU Press, $45.
Amid the surfeit of bad news that has
surfaced of late is the less than obvious connection between the
economic downturn generally and the budget crisis now being faced by
legal service providers. Due to a quirk in the manner in which many
organizations receive funding, hard times for Wall Street now means
it's even harder than usual to fund lawyers who serve the poor.
The
decline in interest rates undercuts the interest earned on a key kind
of account maintained by lawyers, called the Interest on Lawyers Trust
Accounts (IOLTA), a major source
of funding for legal aid organizations. Cash-strapped legal aid groups
may be fielding more demands than ever, yet find themselves less able
to provide services than they were even just last year.
And it is
no secret that, even in flush times, the best efforts of these groups
barely scratch the surface of the legal needs of poor communities and
families. While the victims of Bernie Madoff will almost certainly have
their day in court, it's clear that for many victims of mortgage fraud
and predatory lending schemes, workplace harassment, landlord-tenant
disputes, credit problems, or those grappling with mental illness,
securing a lawyer with the time and inclination to properly address
their needs remains a pipedream.
A new book
by Corey S. Shdaimah, "Negotiating Justice: Progressive Lawyering,
Low-Income Clients, and the Quest for Social Change," makes a measured,
observation-based analysis of the operation of a single legal service
clinic, named with the pseudonym "Northeast Legal Services" or NELS,
that serves poor clients in a medium-sized American city.
Through
interviews, the author applies social science methods in evaluating
day-to-day interactions of lawyers and clients. The book is
particularly meticulous in examining whether the work in the clinic
maps onto the contours of what has been a vigorous conversation in
academic and legal services circles concerning the goals and nature of
community-based legal practice.
Starting several decades ago,
some legal scholars and practitioners on the left began to question
whether the potential for empowering clients in legal work was being
realized in practice. Law professors and pioneering theorists Gerald
Lopez of UCLA, Lucie White at Harvard, and Amherst College's Austin
Sarat, among others, asked whether legal services lawyers were able to,
or did, assist clients in achieving social justice through litigation
and advocacy, or whether power dynamics within the lawyer-client
relationship were actually reinforcing poor clients' difficulty in
effecting change.
After losing many of the struggles to enshrine
social entitlements that were part of the so-called "War on Poverty,"
immediate goals for legal practitioners did - and had to - rise to the
forefront as part of a far more piecemeal approach to legal practice.
Particularly
against the current legal backdrop of largely conservative courts, as
well as federal funding restrictions that prohibit many legal aid
lawyers from bringing class actions and other important types of cases,
it became more crucial for legal services and community-based lawyers
to ensure that their work did not re-victimize poor clients as those
clients sought justice.
Scores of law review articles were
published as part of what Shdaimah calls the "progressive lawyering"
approach, which encouraged legal services lawyers to use opportunities
to listen more closely to clients, to maximize client autonomy and
lawyer-client collaboration, and to gain self-awareness about the
limitations of lawyerly expertise in telling client stories. The
obvious class divisions among lawyers and poor clients were also
highlighted.
As a conversation, it revealed a clear need for
community-based and more holistic, inclusive approaches to the practice
of law that included access to non-legal help as well as self-help, and
justified organizations' attempts to transcend a narrowly legal
approach by grappling with at least some other negative pressures in
clients' lives.
Most of these insights are now accepted widely
by legal services lawyers. They are an important aspect of both
aspirations and achievements of legal services organizations, including
such local, multi-dimensional organizations such as Make the Road by
Walking or The Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem.
Shdaimah's
book is an important recent addition to this tradition of closely
examining public interest legal practice. Isolating certain themes
concerning progressive lawyering, Shdaimah - a lawyer and assistant
professor in the University of Maryland School of Social Work - probes
them carefully. Her innovation is to ask directly about, for example,
lawyer-client collaboration and client autonomy. The book contains
substantial excerpts from interviews, in which we hear both the
lawyers' and clients' voices and perspectives.
Shdaimah argues
with some force that much of the earlier scholarship lacked a
substantial empirical component, and this was to its detriment. From
her perspective, the literature has saddled practitioners with a set of
abstract and difficult-to-achieve goals, thereby burdening lawyers with
the unattainable.
Her most pointed example concerns the value
of collaboration: Shdaimah asks whether wealthy clients get their legal
needs met without being asked to shoulder a laboring oar, and therefore
whether it is fair for clients with far fewer resources to be expected
to perform tasks (such as getting affidavits signed) as a precondition
of receiving services. She rightly points out that, for many clients,
securing access to competent legal counsel is no small victory in
itself.
Yet the book makes it clear that, in practice, lawyers
need client assistance on many aspects of a case due to both the
pressure of caseloads and the greater efficiency of client action on a
matter. In interviews, the lawyers also directly linked their hopes for
collaboration in a particular case to their assessments of client
capacity. One lawyer indicated that he would do far more than usual in
the case of one specific client, a woman who was particularly
vulnerable and easily overwhelmed. In short, a mixture of transactional
and resource realities (and compassion) informed lawyers' judgments in
applying the abstract notion of collaboration to particular clients and
circumstances.
The book, as a whole, will be a terrific
resource for students who would like to leaven their academic
scholarship with insights gained from observations, surveys and
interviews at a real legal clinic. It would also be a deeply helpful
companion text in seminars accompanying clinical legal studies
programs, wherein law students work alongside lawyers to serve clients.
However, with the collaboration question, as with many of the
others that Shdaimah highlights, I found myself far more drawn to the
direct sources and stories she assembled than to her critique of the
scholarship. Much of what Shdaimah found confirms that lawyers are able
to work with clients to secure measurable improvements in their lives,
and are valued in this role by the clients, despite the fact that no
transformational change in the overall conditions of poverty is on the
horizon.
Her descriptions underlined the significance of the core
lawyer-client collaboration - "naming, claiming and blaming" - which
both confirms the clients' feelings of righteousness in their cause,
and makes the most of lawyers' skills in framing challenges and
possible solutions.
Moreover, through the interviews, it was
clear that the lawyers at NELS were very familiar with at least the
broad contours of the literature, and aware of its conceptual
significance for community-based legal centers. Shdaimah did not have
the liberty of studying this kind of legal practice before and after
the notion of progressive lawyering took shape, and these notions
appear to already pervade legal practice at NELS.
My own view is
that the lawyers' attempt to apply such values, however constrained in
practice or by compassion, is a rarely celebrated, but crucially
important, advance in how we have come to imagine legal practice in
these and other settings. When I was a law student, I admit to being
captivated by this literature, and credit it with providing me and
countless others tools for self-examination and self-awareness that
have proven an invaluable part of whatever I have done.
While
scholars such as Lucie White do exhort practitioners to a set of
engagement-oriented norms, equally important for her and others is a
call to situated practice, informed by real-life contingencies and a
clear-eyed assessment of what is possible. So while Shdaimah appears
somewhat dismayed by the distance between the literature and reality, I
am instead reassured by how far we have come in understanding the
challenges and pitfalls of lawyering in poor communities. Shdaimah's
findings at NELS of attentive, hardworking lawyers, who sensitively
work with clients to secure incremental change, are actually a happy,
and somewhat overdue, confirmation that real-world application of these
values creates a legal practice well worth doing.
Tags: Justice, Civil Justice, Civil Legal Aid, Civil Right to Counsel
By Thaddeus Kromelis – 03/12/09
Good news: as part of the omnibus appropriations bill passed yesterday, the Legal Services Corporation will receive an additional $40 million in funding for fiscal year 2009. The timing of the additional funds is critical. Hit hard by the economic downturn, cash-strapped legal aid organizations nationwide are experiencing a tremendous increase in people seeking their services, especially for help with foreclosure cases.
According to their press release, found here, "The additional funding is critical to every one of our programs," LSC President Helaine M. Barnett said. "Low-income individuals and families are increasingly at risk during this economic downturn and our programs are overwhelmed with requests for help."
As part of our Civil Justice Initiative, the Brennan Center for Justice has put together a page chronically the economic downturn impact on civil legal services for the poor—impact on funding, uptick in legal services intake, etc. Click here to read more.
Tags: Justice, Civil Justice, Civil Legal Aid, Civil Right to Counsel, Economic Opportunity
By Emily Savner – 02/17/09
Signed into law today, the $787 billion stimulus package places our bets for the economy’s health on a plan promising job creation, government investment, and tax cuts. Another key component of the economic prescription is the expansion of public benefits programs needed to protect the most vulnerable families from falling deeper into poverty and essential to promoting growth.
To achieve their full remedial potential, these benefit program expansions must come with the assurance that claimants are receiving the full benefits to which they are entitled. Unfortunately, this is where the stimulus fell short. The Washington Post reports that, at least in the area of unemployment compensation, people applying for benefits are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain them.
Read the rest of this story ...
Tags: Justice, Civil Justice, Civil Legal Aid, Civil Right to Counsel
By Emily Savner – 07/11/08
The National Coalition for a Civil
Right to Counsel has launched its new website, providing advocates and the
public with a much-needed information source and a way to coordinate
efforts to expand recognition of a right to counsel in civil cases. The
Coalition is comprised of over 150 advocates from national and state-based
groups and the website is a great place to find the latest news
developments, relevant case law, research and policy studies, and updates on current "civil Gideon"
efforts in both legislatures and the courts, as well as information on ways to promote a civil right to counsel in your
state.
Check it out at: www.civilrighttocounsel.org
Tags: Justice, Civil Justice, Civil Right to Counsel
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