50 years on, a Law Day reminder of the needy

Ancient societies celebrated May with a bacchanal, much wine and general debauchery. During the Cold War, communist countries paraded military might through their capitals, inspiring party loyalty and warning their foes. Perhaps as an antidote to this history, in 1957, President Eisenhower acted on an idea advanced by the American Bar Association, to proclaim May First as Law Day. For the last 50 years, Americans have used the occasion to celebrate the rule of law in our well-ordered society.

Traditionally Law Day has been a time for bar associations and for organizations such as the Maine Bar Foundation to sponsor school events and offer tours of courthouses and demonstrations of civil law process. It’s not as exciting as a riotous party or as awesome as missiles and planes overhead. But it does showcase the touchstone of American liberty: freely accessible courts with independent judges who make decisions on a case-by-case basis, depending on the facts presented in open court.

For many in the legal profession, the day serves as a reminder that our system of laws needs to be carefully and perpetually tended. This year in Maine, lawyers, judges and citizens from many walks of life have dedicated time to an examination of what works and what can be improved in our civil legal system. Since March 2006, numerous working groups under the auspices of the Justice Action Group have studied the problems faced by Maine citizens in accessing the civil legal system. These problems include: difficulties in obtaining a lawyer to represent their cases (an appalling 76 percent of the district court cases have one or both parties unrepresented by counsel); difficulties in navigating physical barriers in our courthouses and, increasingly, problems with language barriers in reading court forms.

Today in Maine, less than one in six qualified low-income people who seek assistance from legal aid lawyers have their cases accepted due to the underfunding of these services. For instance, Pine Tree Legal Assistance, one of a handful of legal-aid providers in Maine, is contacted by 65,000 people a year seeking legal support. Unfortunately, Pine Tree only has sufficient staff to respond to 20 percent of those requests. Maine has exceptional private attorneys who contribute money and time to support this work, but still we find that we are unable to assist all those who need help. In real dollars, the federal government spends less today on legal aid than it did in 1970.

As we celebrate the 50th Law Day, we acknowledge that we fall far short of the aspirations of our founders for the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to be readily and freely available. But, we also give thanks for the efforts of dedicated individuals and groups who daily work to make these lofty goals accessible to all.

Among these is Maine’s own Howard H. Dana Jr., who recently retired as justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. As a part of his commitment to improving America’s legal system, Justice Dana chaired the American Bar Association Task Force on Access to Civil Justice. This task force found that “[w]hen litigants cannot effectively navigate the legal system, they are denied access to fair and impartial dispute resolution, the adversarial process itself breaks down and the courts cannot properly perform their role of delivering a just result.”

Justice Dana’s Task Force recommended to the American Bar Association the following resolution, which it recently adopted as a challenge to us all:

“RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association urges federal, state, and territorial governments to provide legal counsel as a matter of right at public expense to low income persons in those categories of adversarial proceedings where basic human needs are at stake, such as those involving shelter, sustenance, safety, health or child custody, as determined by each jurisdiction.”

When the safety and integrity of the family, a roof over one’s head, safe working and living conditions are threatened, there ought to be a law … and a place to have that law enforced. It will take a great deal of effort for the country and our state to achieve this goal, but we must renew our effort to do so. For the rule of law and its accessibility to all our citizens IS what freedom is about.

Attorney M. Calien Lewis is executive director of the Maine Bar Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing legal aid to low-income and disadvantaged citizens and law related education in Maine.