NCJ Number
130519
Date Published
1990
Length
217 pages
Annotation
In examining the participation of Legal Services Program attorneys and clients in the U.S. Supreme Court's decisionmaking process, both as petitioners and respondents, this study assesses the Court's response to the claims of the poor in the context of the current literature on U.S. Supreme Court decisionmaking and interest-group litigation.
Abstract
The book first examines the development of the Legal Services Program (LSP), which was established in 1965 as part of the Office of Economic Opportunity. This historical review examines how and why the LSP, unlike its legal-aid predecessors, adopted a view of the attorney's role that blended client service and reform. An examination of the LSP's inability to adopt and implement a litigation strategy and the serendipitous nature of the decisions to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court shows that the LSP's involvement in Supreme Court litigation did not fit the reformer model of interest-group litigation. The resultant heterogeneous mix of LSP-sponsored cases brought before the Court is analyzed. The LSP's success is assessed in terms of the case selection process; this includes an exploration of the utility of the current understanding of case selection in explaining the Court's willingness to review almost three-fourths of the 164 LSP-sponsored appeals. The Court's decisions on the merits in LSP cases are compared to the Court's usual response to the cases it selects for review in terms of case and litigant attributes commonly associated with success. Judicial support for the LSP and agreement among the justices in these cases are examined. The LSP's success is explained as a confluence of litigant claims, available legal bases, and judicial values joined by a political climate attentive to poverty and equality issues. 21 tables, appended supplementary information, a 391-item bibliography, and a subject index