Access to Justice
![handle is hein.journals/flr69 and id is 1805 raw text is: ACCESS TO JUSTICE
Deborah L. Rhode*
Equal justice under law is one of America's most firmly
embedded and widely violated legal principles. It embellishes
courthouse entries, ceremonial occasions, and occasionally even
constitutional decisions. But it comes nowhere close to describing the
justice system in practice. Millions of Americans lack any access to
the system, let alone equal access. An estimated four-fifths of the civil
legal needs of the poor, and the needs of an estimated two- to three-
fifths of middle-income individuals, remain unmet.1 Governmental
legal services and indigent criminal defense budgets are capped at
ludicrous levels, which make effective assistance of counsel for most
low-income litigants a statistical impossibility.2 We tolerate a system
* Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law and Director, Keck Center on Legal Ethics
and the Legal Profession, Stanford University; B.A., Yale (1974), J.D. Yale (1977).
The research assistance of Joshua Klein and the manuscript assistance of Mary Tye
are gratefully acknowledged.
1. For unmet needs of the poor, see Access to Justice Development Campaign
2000: The Case for Support, Mich. B.J., Mar. 2000, at 370; Alan W. Houseman, Civil
Legal Assistance for the Twenty-First Century: Achieving Equal Justice for All, 17 Yale
L. & Pol'y Rev. 369, 402 (1998) [hereinafter Houseman, Legal Assistance]; David C.
Leven, Justice for the Forgotten and Despised, 16 Touro L Rev. 1, 6-7 (1999); Robert
J. Rhudy, Comparing Legal Services to the Poor in the United States with Other
Western Countries: Some Preliminary Lessons, 5 Md. J. Contemp. Legal Issues 223,
224 (1994); Fla. Bar Ass'n, Access to the Legal System 29 (1999); Legal Servs. Corp.,
Serving the Civil Legal Needs of Low-Income Americans: A Special Report to
Congress 12 (2000); Legal Services Project, Funding Civil Legal Services for the Poor
Report to the Chief Judge 5 (1998); Or. State Bar Ass'n, The State of Access to
Justice in Oregon (2000); and Hearing on the Legal Services Corporation Before the
Subcomm. on Commercial and Admin. Law of the House Judiciary Comm. (1999)
(statement of John Pickering). For unmet needs of middle income consumers, see
ABA Consortium on Legal Services and the Public, Agenda for Access: The
American People and Civil Justice (1996); ABA Consortium on Legal Services and
the Public, Legal Needs and Civil Justice: A Survey of Americans (1994); Maryland
Moderate-Income Access to Justice Advisory Taskforce, Preliminary Report and
Preliminary Recommendations on the Unmet Legal Needs of Moderate-Income
Persons in Maryland (1996) [hereinafter Maryland Report]; and Roy W. Reese &
Carolyn A. Aldred, ABA, Legal Needs Among Low-Income and Moderate-Income
Households: Summary of Findings for the Comprehensive Legal Needs Study (1995).
See also Access to Justice Working Group, Report to the State Bar of California 4-6
(1996) [hereinafter California Report] (estimating that three-quarters of the needs of
California poor are unmet).
2. See infra notes 7-22 and accompanying text.
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Access to Justice
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