PSJD Public Interest News Digest – November 3, 2017
Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives
Hello there, interested public! I hope everyone had a good National Pro Bono Week last week–there was lots to do here in DC, including the NALP/PSJD Public Service Mini-Conference and the Equal Justice Works Career Fair. Thanks to everyone who was able to attend, and especially to those of you who contributed to the week’s programming.
Now, let’s catch up on the news. Highlights include a Harvard Law Record report causing a stir at Harvard and more broadly about the legal academy’s proper role in society and ongoing dramas concerning student debt policy, cash bail in California, and public defenders’ responsibilities in Missouri.
Until next week,
Sam
Editor’s Pick: Harvard Law Record Challenges Harvard Law School to Assume Greater Social Responsibility
- The Harvard Law Record published a report, “Our Bicentennial Crisis,” arguing that Harvard Law is not doing enough to address a growing “civic deficit”:[A] bicentennial is not just a time for celebration of the past — it is also a time to confront the present and plan the future. As we celebrate, many students are concerned: about our school being overtaken by corporate interests and losing relevance to the average American; about a watchdog of the law being largely asleep as the institutions of the rule of law and equal justice under law are under siege; and of a school community that has lost track of its declared mission to “educate leaders who contribute to the advancement of justice and the well-being of society.”
Student Loans
- Senator Elizabeth Warren expressed concern that Navient’s recent acquisition of Earnest, an online lending service, positioned the company to profit from convincing debtholders with forgiveness-eligible federal student loans to refinance with its own private loan products.
- The CFPB released its 6th annual report of the CFPB Student Loan Ombudsman; Forbes.com reported that “the CFPB has helped return $750 million to student loan borrowers since 2011.”
- The Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee praised the Department of Education’s decision to stop sharing information with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
- A bipartisan group of twenty-five state attorneys general have written to Secretary DeVos asking her to reject student loan industry requests that she use federal authority to block state-level regulatory schemes.
- Seventeen states and the District of Columbia sued the Department of Education, alleging its refusal to enforce the Gainful Employment Rule (a regulation designed to protect student borrowers) violates federal law.
- Anonymous sources revealed that Secretary DeVos’ Department of Education is considering replacing the Obama-era policy of fully forgiving the debt of students defrauded by for-profit colleges with one that would only partially forgive such debts.
- The US Naval Institute’s news service published an article discussing the importance of PSLF to Navy recruiting.
- Student Loan Hero published the results of a survey on the mental health impacts of student debt.
Disaster Legal Aid
- NPR profiled Hurricane Maria Legal Assistance–a team of volunteer law professors and students who have been travelling across the island to provide legal relief to hurricane victims.
- UC Hastings Law offered legal assistance to wildfire victims in California’s wine country.
- A coalition of organizations have created a hotline with English, Spanish, and Chinese language support to provide legal aid to fire victims across California.
Immigration
- MLive.com examined the impact of Washtenaw County, MI’s decision last summer to create a fund to help immigrants facing hardships due to federal immigration enforcement and other challenges.
- Columbus, OH decided to establish a legal defense fund for immigrants facing deportation.
- Minnesota non-profits serving immigrants wrote to ICE, arguing that the agency’s plans to increase the volume of its immigration detention operations would threaten due process rights, as free service providers are already struggling to meet demand.
- NowToronto.com published an expose of long-term detention without charge as part of Canada’s immigration system.
Access to Justice : Civil
- Judge Posner, formerly of the Seventh Circuit, announced he will be forming a nationwide pro bono law group as part of his new quest to help pro se litigants.
- Canada’s Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin delivered remarks blaming a lack of legal aid funding for access to justice challenges facing Canada’s poor and marginalized.
- The Equire Pro Bono 2017 Survey found that 89% of attorneys performed services pro bono last year, with over a third (37%) providing more than 100 hours.
- DigitalJournal.com profiled DAABA, a mobile app connecting people who cannot afford lawyers with legal service providers such as law students, paralegals, or licensed attorneys.
- The Pew Charitable Trusts Research & Analysis section examined how municipal right-to-counsel programs for landlord-tenant court prevent evictions and combat homelessness.
- The Portland Press Herald profiled Maine’s new “Rural Practice Fellowship”–a program that places law students with attorneys in rural parts of the state in an effort to address access to justice issues in 12 of Maine’s 16 counties.
Access to Justice : Criminal
- Missouri public defenders are speaking out against recent Missouri Supreme Court rulings (discussed in earlier digests), which they say force them to choose between “tak[ing] on too many cases and risk losing their law license to an ethics complaint, or refus[ing] to take on an excessive workload and risk being held in contempt of court and jailed.”
- As California’s Chief Justice called for an end to cash bail, the San Francisco Public Defender’s office confirmed it has decided as a matter of policy to challenge bail in every criminal case in which it has been set, triggering a hearing in which a judge must consider alternatives to incarceration.
- Prosecutors and public defenders in Louisville, KY are collaborating to streamline arraignments in hopes of reducing crowding within jails that have been over capacity for more than a year.
- Public defenders in Hancock County, IN waited to be paid as the county’s public defender fund hovers near $0.
- A state district judge recently allowed a class action lawsuit filed by Louisiana inmates charging the state has unconstitutionally underfunded public defense to proceed; a federal court dismissed a similar lawsuit filed on behalf of New Orleans public defenders earlier this year.
- Vermont’s Chief Public Defender criticized the state’s arrangement to house inmates in a Pennsylvania prison, making it much more difficult for defenders to get access to their clients.
- An op-ed in the Kansas City Star argued that the unsustainable caseload of the Kansas City public defender’s office can only be solved by addressing the Kansas City prosecutorial practice that prefers to incarcerate defendants pre-trial: “It is at least twice as hard and time consuming to effectively represent a client who cannot make bail.”
Indigenous People & The Law
- In Manitoba, five judges met with Indigenous leaders to discuss how to improve the justice system as part of a new effort to redress the high incarceration rate for Indigenous people in the province.
- Court watchers are optimistic that Prime Minister Trudeau may soon appoint the first Indigenous jurist to Canada’s Supreme Court.
Music Bonus!
With compliments of the season: