Page 85 - Impact: Collected Essays on Expanding Access to Justice

Given the extent of the need for counsel, any consideration of the right to counsel in civil cases must consider weighing factors and drawing lines as to how far such a right should extend .14 This is no different from the criminal context, where the courts have established limits on the right to counsel . For example, the Supreme Court has held that there is no right to state-provided counsel in some criminal proceedings unlikely to result in incarceration .15
One example of a legal matter that falls on the side of the right to counsel being not necessary is parking tickets . With New York City issuing over nine million parking tickets in 2014,16 there is little argument that there should be a right to counsel to contest these tickets, even though these tickets can adversely impact low-income New Yorkers in a variety of ways .17 At a cost to the government of providing counsel at even the extremely low amount of $200 per case, given the percentage of New York City residents who live in poverty, the provision of a right to counsel to contest parking tickets could cost maybe half a billion dollars . Further, substantively the parking tickets themselves range from $45 to $180 .18 Thus, providing counsel to challenge parking tickets would cost the government more than it could potentially collect from issuing the tickets in the first place .
At the other end of the spectrum, the right to counsel in housing court has seen perhaps the most forceful advocacy of any of the basic human needs referenced by the American Bar Association . This is particularly true in New York City, where advocacy for the right to counsel in the City’s Housing Courts has been continuous .19 Advocacy on this issue has most recently been picked up by the Right to Counsel NYC Coalition, a coalition of “tenant organizing groups, tenant advocates, law schools and legal services organizations,” including NYLAG .20 The New York Law School Impact Center for Public Interest Law’s Right to Counsel Project, through its academic and other support, plays a leading role in advancing the mission of this Coalition .21
14 See Engler, supra note 3.
15 See Scott v. Illinois, 440 u.S. 367 (1979).
16 See Amber Jamieson, This App Will Fight Your Parking Ticket So You Don’t Have To, n.y. PosT, June 14, 2015, http:// nypost.com/2015/06/14/this-app-will-fight-your-parking-ticket-so-you-dont-have-to/.
17 The ticket costs can present a hardship for some individuals. In addition, the consequences of accumulating unpaid parking tickets can be severe. See Monica Davey, Ferguson One of 2 Missouri Suburbs Sued Over Gantlet of Traffic Fines and Jail, n.y. Times, Feb. 8, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/us/ferguson-one-of-2-missouri- suburbs-sued-over-gantlet-of-traffic-fines-and-jail.html?_r=0.
18 See Tribunals, nyc admin. JusTice coordinaTor, hTTP://www.nyc.goV/hTml/aJc/hTml/Tribunals/Tribunals.shTml (last visited May 13, 2016).
19 See Raymond h. Brescia, Sheltering Counsel:Toward a Right to a Lawyer in Eviction Proceedings, 25Touro l. reV. 187 (2009) (discussing the 2008 New York State Bar Association conference, An Obvious Truth: Creating an Action Blueprint for a Civil Right to Counsel in New York State).
20 See Home, righT To counsel nyc coaliTion, http://www.righttocounselnyc.org/ (last visited Mar. 14, 2016); About, righT To counsel nyc coaliTion, http://www.righttocounselnyc.org/about (last visited Mar. 14, 2016).
21 See Right to Counsel Project, new york law school, imPacT cenTer for Public inTeresT law, http://www.nyls.edu/ impact-center-for-public-interest-law/projects-and-institutes/right-to-counsel-project/ (last visited Mar. 14, 2016).
Alternative Models
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