by RICH CASSIDY on APRIL 21, 2010
Today, April 21, 2010, and tomorrow are “ABA Day in Washington,” and nearly 300 lawyers from around the county descended on their Congressman and Senators to press the ABA Agenda on justice related issues.
- Reasonably adequate funding for the Legal Service Corporation;
- Easing restrictions on the kind of representation legal aid lawyers can provide for indigent clients and reauthorization of the LSC (H.R. 3764 and S. 718);
- More equitable tax treatment to victims recovering compensation from civil rights claims under the Civil Rights Tax Relief Act ( H.R. 3035 and S. 1360); and
- Making the Equal Pay Act a more powerful tool to assure pay equity from women under the Paycheck Fairness Act (H.R. 12 and S. 182).
That agenda was topped by these subjects:
In addition, some ABA state delegations, including my own from the Vermont Bar Association, urged the Congress to amend the Senate version of the Consumer Financial Protection Act (S. 3127) to make clear that most lawyers providing legal services to individuals do not thereby become subject to the general jurisdiction of the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
This last issue may sound to some like “special pleading” to take care of the interests of lawyers. But the fact is, that in nearly every state, lawyers are, and have been for many, many years, subject to extensive and quite effective regulation administered by state judicial authorities. The ABA view is that subjecting lawyers to another regulatory scheme make create a confusing and possibly conflicting regulatory environment. That would tend to make it even more difficult for lawyers to be able to serve consumer who need legal help, such as defendants in home mortgage foreclosures.
Our delegation included Vermont Bar Association President Eileen Blackwood, VBA President-Elect Terry Corsones, VBA Executive Director Bob Paolini, ABA State Delegate Fritz Langrock, and me, in my role as the VBA’s ABA Delegate.
At noon, we had an excellent meeting with Senator Bernard Sanders, (I-VT), who as a Senator, and before that as a member of the House, has been a real champion of adequate funding for the Legal Services Corporation. Senator Sanders made clear that he is committed to standing tall for legal services for the poor again this session. And Senator Sanders indicated interest in each of the other issues we presented.
This afternoon were joined by ABA President Carolyn Lamm and ABA Governmental Affairs Director Sussman, and others, for our meeting with Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT). The Senator’s role as Chairmen of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary makes him one of the most influential members of Congress on issues of concern to lawyers.
We met Chairman Leahy in his hideaway office in dome of the Capitol looking directly down the Mall to the Washington Monument. The Chairman has a long history of supporting the kinds of access to justice, due process, and civil liberties issues that concern the members of the American Bar Association.
Senator Leahy talks with our delegation Photo credit to Joyce N. Boghosian/American Bar Association
Chairman Leahy and his staff, including Chief of Staff Ed Pagano, could not have been more welcoming and hospitable to our group. Of course, Senator Leahy will work to obtain more adequate LSC funding and he too seemed interested in each of the other issues we presented.
He then took our group out on his balcony overlooking the Mall, and before he left us, showed us though to Capitol Rotunda and gave us a personally guided tour of the old Senate Chamber.
All and all, the Chairman took a full hour from his jammed schedule to exchange views and show hospitality to his home state constituents and our ABA colleagues.
The experience was an exhilarating one for us, and as we compared notes with other state delegations at a Capitol Hill Reception at the James Madison Memorial Building of the Library of Congress, I was struck again by the personal attention both of our Senators extended to us. Many other state delegations had good meetings, but few, I think, had as much face time with their senators as we did.
I left convinced that individual lawyers can impact the course of public policy and help, if in only a small way, to bend what Doctor Martin Luther King once called “the long arc of the moral universe” towards justice.
Tomorrow, some members of the Vermont delegation will meet with Vermont’s lone member of the House of Representatives, the Honorable Peter Welch.