[Download] "Legal Representation for the Poor: Can Society Afford This Much Injustice? (2010 Earl F. Nelson Lecture)" by Missouri Law Review # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Legal Representation for the Poor: Can Society Afford This Much Injustice? (2010 Earl F. Nelson Lecture)
- Author : Missouri Law Review
- Release Date : January 22, 2010
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 346 KB
Description
A New Yorker cartoon depicts a lawyer facing his client, asking the critical question: "You've got a pretty good case, how much justice can you afford?" Of course, the promise is equal justice for all. But that is an aspiration, not reality. The poor person accused of a crime cannot afford any justice. So how much justice is society going to provide? Competent counsel for the accused, with the resources needed for investigation and consultation with experts, is essential for the proper working of our adversary system of justice. States can afford to provide high quality representation for the accused--appropriate for the high stakes involved: liberty or even life--but most states are not willing to provide a decent level of representation for poor people accused of a crime. The result in many places is a system that lacks legitimacy and credibility, sometimes does not provide reliable results, and, on occasion, produces great miscarriages of justice. The criminal justice system is overwhelmed. In the 1970s, there were about 200,000 people in prisons and jails in the United States. (1) That number had held, relative to the population, pretty steady throughout our history. (2) Then over the next forty years there was an increase of 800 percent, (3) so that today there are 2.3 million men, women, and children in our prisons and jails. (4) The United States now has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. (5)