Page 32 - Impact: Collected Essays on the Threat of Economic Inequality

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homelessness and displacement, and it will protect their ability to remain in their homes and communities . A home is, for most of us, and particularly for those with low incomes, our most important material possession . It serves as the center of our lives as family members and community members . It attaches us to schools, work, friends, and health care . It enables us to vote and otherwise participate in the political process . Helping people retain this all-important asset helps them retain whatever wealth they have managed to accrue and gives them a perch from which to access additional wealth . At the same time, guaranteeing a right to counsel addresses the inequitable distribution of justice and conveys a strong and sorely-needed message of respect for the rights and dignity of the city’s low-income residents .
The statistical data on growing economic inequality keeps mounting . Between 1979 and 2007, incomes of the wealthiest 1 percent in the United States rose 275 percent, more than fifteen times the increase for households in the poorest 20 percent .5 Income disparity in New York City is particularly extreme . In 2013, the wealthiest 20 percent of households in the City had incomes more than twenty-six times greater than the poorest 20 percent .6 In Manhattan, the wealthiest 20 percent had incomes more than forty-two times those of the poorest 20 percent, giving Manhattan the dubious distinction of being the county with the highest disparity in income in the United States .7 And the American wealth divide has pronounced racial and ethnic dimensions . In 2009, the median net worth of White households in the United States was twenty times that of Black households and eighteen times that of Latino households .8
Because we have an adversarial system of dispute resolution that contemplates that both sides will be represented by counsel, in most litigation, a litigant needs an attorney to have meaningful access to the court system . Yet meaningful access to justice is denied to those who cannot afford counsel . The importance of counsel to the fair administration of justice has long been recognized by the United States Supreme Court, which said, finding a right to counsel in death penalty cases in 1932, that “[e]ven the intelligent and educated layman has small and sometimes no skill in the science of law .”9 And in another context in 1964, the Supreme Court stated that “[l]aymen cannot be expected to know how to protect their rights when dealing with practiced and carefully counseled adversaries .”10
Access to justice is, in effect, a commodity, and like other commodities, it can be bought if one has the financial resources and can be denied if one does not . In other words, disparities in wealth also dictate disparities in access to justice . This commodification of justice has led to a yawning justice gap that parallels the wealth gap . In 2010, New York State Court of Appeals Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman established The Task Force to Expand Delivery of Legal Services in New York, which has, since it was convened, issued an annual report that tracks the justice gap in New York . The Task Force’s 2014 report found, for example, that in 2013 more than 1 .8 million people in
5 congressional BudgeT office, Trends in The disTriBuTion of household income BeTween 1979 and 2007 ix (2011), available at https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/10-25-HouseholdIncome_0.pdf.
6 Andrew Beveridge, Tackling Inequality: Some Data on Changing Inequality in NYC, impacT cenTer for puBlic inTeresT law aT new york law school (april 17, 2015), http://www.nyls.edu/impact-center-for-public-interest-law/wp-content/ uploads/sites/140/2013/07/Income-and-Wealth-CLE.pdf.
7 Id.
8 Rakesh Kochhar et al., Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks and Hispanics: Twenty-to-One, pew research cenTer (July 26, 2011), http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/07/26/wealth-gaps-rise-to-record-highs- between-whites-blacks-hispanics/.
9 Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45, 69 (1932).
10 Bhd. of R.R. Trainmen v. Virginia ex rel. Virginia State Bar, 377 U.S. 1, 7 (1964).
Impact: Collected Essays on the Threat of Economic Inequality