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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Emerging Legal Architecture For Social Justice, Luz E. Herrera, Louise G. Trubek
The Emerging Legal Architecture For Social Justice, Luz E. Herrera, Louise G. Trubek
Faculty Scholarship
Lawyers advocating for social change are now front and center in newspapers and social media. This article discusses how a new breed of progressive lawyers envision social justice law practice today. These “critical lawyers” are diverse in background, gender, ethnicity and race. They see law as a complex, contradictory tool rather than a necessary and sufficient route to justice. Their practices differ from the traditional non-profit public interest firms of the earlier generation that assumed justice would result if law and lawyers were accessible. To highlight the differences, the article discusses the law practices of Beyond Legal Aid, Law for …
Griffin V. Illinois: Justice Independent Of Wealth, Neil Sobol
Griffin V. Illinois: Justice Independent Of Wealth, Neil Sobol
Faculty Scholarship
More than sixty years ago in Griffin v. Illinois, Justice Hugo Black opined that equal justice cannot exist as long as “the kind of trial a man gets depends on the amount of money he has.” While Griffin dealt with the limited issue of the inability of a defendant to pay for an appellate transcript, the Supreme Court and legislatures would subsequently extend Black’s equal justice analysis to cases involving other forms of criminal justice debt assessed at trial, appeal, incarceration, and probation. Despite the promise of these judicial and legislative pronouncements, indigent defendants, relative to defendants with financial …