Society must be Committed to Justice for All
by Justice Harriet O’Neill, Supreme Court of Texas
 

In 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower established Law Day, which occurs during the first week of May, as a time to celebrate and reflect on our rich heritage of freedom, justice and equality under the law. Unique and central to this heritage is the tremendous value we place on individual freedoms, and the extent to which we guarantee and protect them by law. But equal justice under the law can be an empty promise for too many Americans who lack the means to seek help for their civil legal problems.

These problems are broad and varied: The woman who left her husband after years of emotional and physical abuse, but could not afford to get a divorce. The elderly mother in public housing threatened with eviction because her adult son violated the occupancy rules by occasionally staying overnight to care for her. The eligible applicant for Medicaid assistance summarily denied benefits because a form was filled out incorrectly. The colonia resident who paid hard-earned cash for a home built on land with a defective title. 

If you think legal aid lawyers can handle these problems and thousands more like them, think again. Faced with limited resources, these lawyers must reject three-quarters of the cases that indigent Texans (those making less than $11,225 per year, if single, or $23,000 per year for a family of four) need help with. And many people who do not qualify as “indigents” face the same problems. Take the case of a single mother stabbed by an ex-boyfriend. She missed a car payment when she was in the hospital and, despite her efforts to catch up with what she owed the car dealer, her car was repossessed – until a lawyer interceded, working for free.  His legal help got her back on track and back to work.  Another example – “identity theft.” These thieves don’t discriminate on the basis of income when they find enough information about you to obtain credit in your name. Their victims suddenly face thousands of dollars in legal fees to clean up credit problems they didn’t cause.

If you can’t afford to pay, what do you do?

Thousands of lawyers generously donate significant time to provide free legal services to those in need. But access to justice should be more than lawyers’ aspiration. It must be society’s commitment.

The Supreme Court of Texas created the Texas Access to Justice Commission to expand access to civil legal services for low-income Texans. Another program the Court established taps interest earned on certain lawyer trust accounts to fund these greatly needed services. Texas lawyers, too, have stepped up to the plate, donating more than $1 million last year. 

With a grant from the Legal Services Corporation, the Access to Justice Commission and the Texas Equal Access to Justice Foundation together have worked to expand access to legal services through a new Web site – www.TexasLawHelp.org – which provides information on common legal issues that face low-income Texans. The site offers a database of legal aid organizations, and in time will provide self-help materials and be translated into Spanish.

For the 3.1 million people living in poverty in Texas, legal aid can mean keeping their homes, freeing themselves from abuse or securing much needed disability benefits. This Law Day, let us applaud the Texas attorneys who are donating their time and money to provide these critical services. And let us strengthen our resolve, as a community, to ensure that the legal system is equally accessible to those Texans most in need.