Posted on 10/31/2008 12:43:53 PM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
ROCHESTER, NY-Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit raised some hackles earlier this month with a speech on pro bono lawyering at a Federalist Society dinner in Rochester.
The Oct. 6 speech, entitled "Pro Bono for Fun and Profit," promised at the outset to be "unusually provocative" and the judge said straight away, "My point, in a nutshell, is that much of what we call legal work for the public interest is essentially self-serving: Lawyers use public interest litigation to promote their own agendas, social and political - and (on a wider plane) to promote the power and the role of the legal profession itself."
Judge Jacobs cited examples where litigation against governments and officials had unintended consequences. He criticized "so-called impact litigation" as overtly political and divorced from the requirements of standing. In one case, he said, attorneys at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law challenging the legal services statute illustrated "a mechanism that is often in the shadows, and showed how public interest litigation promotes political interests of lawyers and activists, altogether apart from any felt need by clients, who are marginalized or rendered superfluous altogether."
Judge Jacobs also went out of his way to appreciate "lawyers who serve people and institutions that otherwise would be denied essential services and opportunities" and praised pro bono work for providing services in the "great tradition of American volunteerism."
(Excerpt) Read more at nylawyer.com ...
In other news, scientists today discovered that the sky is blue...
The kind of pro bono work I do brings those out of those shadow...........you know the ones without any paperwork or documents at all , like Obama, who was born in a country that doesn’t have birth certificates, into actual real documented society....paternity, parenting plans, driver licenses, insurance
After like fifteen U2 albums, doesn’t Bono have enough money already?
Maybe with any luck we can get Jane Fonda to promise us she’d move back to Vietnam should McCain win.
If we’re really lucky she’ll take Turner with her.
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