Chief Justice George, as quoted in California Litigation, Vol. 20, No 1 (Kenneth Babcock, 2007):
The availability of affordable legal assistance even for the middle class is often an illusion, and access to legal assistance for those at the bottom of the economic ladder too frequently is viewed as a luxury totally out of reach. As a result, individuals facing crises that may affect everything from their ability to earn a livelihood to their right to care for their children find themselves required to navigate a legal system that largely is designed for and by specialists in the field--lawyers and judges--or even worse, to stand outside the system, ignorant of or intimidated by the first steps they need to take to avail themselves of its services.
In my humble opinion, more laws do not generally help poor people, because poor people need more money, and more rights do not always or necessarily translate into more money.
[Note on June 22, 2012: to keep things fresh on the home page, I've manually changed the date of this blog post.]
The availability of affordable legal assistance even for the middle class is often an illusion, and access to legal assistance for those at the bottom of the economic ladder too frequently is viewed as a luxury totally out of reach. As a result, individuals facing crises that may affect everything from their ability to earn a livelihood to their right to care for their children find themselves required to navigate a legal system that largely is designed for and by specialists in the field--lawyers and judges--or even worse, to stand outside the system, ignorant of or intimidated by the first steps they need to take to avail themselves of its services.
In my humble opinion, more laws do not generally help poor people, because poor people need more money, and more rights do not always or necessarily translate into more money.
[Note on June 22, 2012: to keep things fresh on the home page, I've manually changed the date of this blog post.]
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