The Harvard center Green referred to is the Harvard Center for Law and Education, and the Detroit case is the suit currently before the Supreme Court, which, if decided in favor of the center's position, would cause a virtual revolution in elementary and secondary school education as many city school systems would be forced to bus children across city lines and into neighboring suburbs. Founded in 1969 through an OEO grant to the University, the center spends about half its time in helping to litigate class action suits, of which the Detroit case is the one with the most potentially far-reaching effects.
The center's activity in that desegration suit illustrates the intimate connection the nationally-based center has with local service groups in communities throughout the country. J. Harold Flannery, the center's director at the time the Detroit case was initiated in 1971, had become nationally known for his work on school desegregation in his five-year term with the Department of Justice. When the Detroit NAACP decided to bring the case against the Detroit school board, they came to Flannery for help. He directed many of the center's resources into an analysis of the highly complex allegations of discrimination made against the city's school board. Flannery himself argued the case successfully before the U.S. Court of Appeals, and then afterwards, when the school board appealed that decision, before the U.S. Supreme Court, where action is still pending.
Flannery, who is now director of the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington, says that Detroit is representative of the type of case that will suffer without access to the center's resources. "There will be a large number of cases in which back-up centers won't be missed," Flannery explains. "These are the run-of-the-mill cases, such as consumer fraud and welfare cases. But there are many cases that require resources in terms of personnel and time available. Many local offices are avalanched and aren't well-equipped to undertake more reform-oriented cases. These type of cases will suffer. And that's the object of the deletion by Congress."
Another case whose prosecution would have been impaired without the center's help, in Flannery's opinion, is the Boston desegregation case, which Flannery also successfully argued on behalf of the NAACP before Judge W. Arthur Garrity in the U.S. Court of Appeals last month. "It is fatuous to say the Boston case wouldn't have been brought without the center," Flannery says, "but the center had a major role."
The center has been involved in many other class action suits, including ones relating to students' rights and the right of native Alaskan children to public education. Without the resources of the Harvard center, it is unlikely that local agencies would have had the time or ability to litigate these cases successfully. Nor would neighborhood attorneys have had access to less dramatic forms of assistance, such as pamphlets sent them by the center to help with an individual's particular problem. Nor would they have access to the center's monthly publication. Inequality, which contains studies intended to aid local lawyers with common legal problems in education. In Flannery's terms, elimination of the Harvard center, together with the other back-up groups, would result in a "Partial lobotomy" of the legal services provided for the nation's poor.
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Richard A. Hesse, director of the National Consumer Law Center, another research agency located in downtown Boston, likens the effect of the center to a doctor-patient relationship. "Often, when a doctor is trying to treat a patient, he turns to a resource, such as a specialist or a medical laboratory," he says. If that resource is cut off, he continues, the doctor will have much more difficulty in helping the patient: "The doctor will survive; whether the patient will remains to be seen."
The consumer law center was established in 1969 through a $200,000-OEO grant to the Boston College Law School. Since then, like many of the other research units, the consumer law center broke off from the college and set itself up as an independent corporation. Like the Harvard center, it has played an active role in litigation. Last year, Hesse says, about 500 suits were initiated on the basis of the center's work. In the area of repossessed automobiles alone six cases now on the way to the Supreme Court are dependent in some way on assistance provided by the group. "I'm not arrogant enough to say they're going to die without us," says Hesse, referring to the cases, "but I am enough to say they'll suffer. General Motors, on the other side, will not suffer--it can bring in as many lawyers as it wants. But our clients will be left with one arm tied behind their back."
Hesse does not agree with critics who accuse the back-up centers of fomenting social unrest. "All our litigation is achieving is due process of law. It's something so primitive I'm embarrassed to talk about it in a civilized society." For instance, he says, an auto dealer can repossess a car on which he claims there is a default of payments without even notifying the owner. "All we're asking is that the consumer be given a chance to make his case," he explains.
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The bill establishing the independent legal services corporation is currently legal services corporation is currently lying on President Nixon's desk. If he signs it--as he almost surely will--the cutting edge of legal services for the poor will lose much of its bite. Funds for both the Harvard and Consumer Law centers, as well as for the 16 other back-up bodies, will end in the fall. But the centers, struggling for years against the entrenched abuses of American society, are accustomed to adversity, and, if they can help it, they will not die without a struggle.
Robert Pressman, current director of the Center for Law and Education, says he will look to foundation grants in the event of a termination of federal funds. Hesse, for his part, is determined to defy the intention of the people in Washington. "This institution will survive one way or another," he says. "We won't go out of business because of Mr. Nixon. We'll suffer a little, but we'll be here." He thinks the center might receive some funding from labor unions, who have worked closely with the center's attorneys in the past.
It has been a decade since Lyndon Johnson told the American people that it could eliminate poverty. Now, with the demise of the Office of Economic Opportunity to come in September, Johnson's hopes lie trampled in the ever-deep rut of poverty that runs through the nation's cities.
Legal aid for the poor has become an accepted concept in American society, but without the proper back-up resources, it can only serve as a thin cushion insulating a large class of citizens from the shocks of poverty. With the limiting of the poor's access to the courts, perhaps social change will take place in the nation's streets.