Page 34 - Impact: Collected Essays on the Threat of Economic Inequality

32
for themselves and their children, and reported more parenting stress . Some evidence suggests that at least two years after their eviction, mothers still experienced significantly higher rates of material hardship and depression than peers . Our findings indicate that to fully understand the lives of disadvantaged women, we should examine not only events related to work, welfare, and family, but also those related to housing, eviction being among the most consequential of them .18
Access to commodities is, to a greater or lesser extent, generally understood to be dictated by the economic marketplace—one can only get what one is able to pay for . However, access to justice is commonly understood—as it should be—in other than market-based terms . “Equal justice for all” is a bedrock principle of our democratic culture and values and a notion that shapes legitimate expectations about fairness and meaningful access in our legal system . This concept that justice is neutral, fair and impartial, and available to all without regard to ability to pay is deeply embedded in the foundation of American jurisprudence . Just recently, Justice Roberts, writing for the Supreme Court majority and upholding restrictions on judicial fundraising in Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar, explained that bedrock ideological, philosophical notion as follows:
Judges, charged with exercising strict neutrality and independence, cannot supplicate campaign donors without diminishing public confidence in judicial integrity . This principle dates back at least eight centuries to the Magna Carta, which proclaimed, “To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice .” [ ] The same concept underlies the common law judicial oath, which binds a judge to “do right to all manner of people . . . without fear or favour, affection or ill-will,”[ ] and the oath that each of us took to “administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich,” [ ](emphasis added and internal citations in endnote) .19
Wealth-based access to justice presents a jarring contrast between our fundamental ideology and our actual practice . Indeed, when the rhetoric of equality in justice is belied by the inequitable distribution of justice and its relationship to wealth, these lofty principles are defiled . And, this wealth/justice gap is a direct consequence of government policy, both what government does and what it fails to do . Government certainly has the power to foster a more equitable distribution of justice by guaranteeing and funding a right to counsel . In New York, government has done so in a number of areas, including criminal defense (as have all the states following Gideon v. Wainright),20 civil commitment and child custody matters . In 1993, New York City created a right to counsel for respondents in court proceedings where the City seeks removal or detention due to tuberculosis infection .21
Yet, not only does government fail to make access to justice available on an equitable basis, all too often, government exacerbates the inequitable distribution of justice by, in fact, supporting and subsidizing access to the judicial system for the rich to a far greater degree than for the poor . For example, it is clear that tax deductions for the wealthy for legal expenses result in loss of
18 maTThew desmond & rachel TolBerT kimBro, evicTion’s fallouT: housing, hardship, and healTh (2015), available at http://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/DesmondKimbro_Evictions_Fallout_SF2015.pdf.
19 Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar, No. 13-1499, 2015 U.S. LEXIS 2983, at *19-20 (U.S. 2015) (quoting Cl. 40 (1215), in w. mckechnie, magna carTa, a commenTary on The greaT charTer of king John 395 (2d ed. 1914); 10 encyclopedia of The laws of england 105 (2d ed. 1908); 28 u. s. c. § 453 (2012)).
20 Gideon v. Wainright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963).
21 24 R.C.N.Y. § 11.21(e)-(f) (2015).
Impact: Collected Essays on the Threat of Economic Inequality