For the poor and disenfranchised: An institutional and historical analysis of American public interest law, 1876 to 1990

This study analyzes the historical development of the public interest and poverty bars. It explores the institutional response of the legal profession to its mandate to serve the public by making the legal system available to all and a vehicle for substantive justice. It describes three types of public interest practices -- direct service, political mobilization, and entrepreneurial lawyering -- and how those practices influenced the availability of legal representation and the degree and type of advocacy for the poor and disenfranchised. It also examines the evolution of pro bono publico from a professional responsibility of individual attorneys to an institutionalized expression of large commercial firms' uneasy commitment to non-market forms of legal service.; This dissertation uses case studies of early twentieth century legal aid societies, the Legal Services Corporation, the ACLU and NAACP (and NAACP-LDF), and public interest law firms to show how legal reformers have attempted to resolve tensions between formal and substantive justice. Direct service lawyering arose to address the legal needs of the poor in an era of urbanization and massive immigration. Under the leadership of the elite of the bar, the profession institutionalized a form of service based on noblesse oblige, good government, and a form of citizenship that stressed order and conformity to wage labor. The formation of the Legal Services program was a reaction by legal and policy reformers to that model. It saw law as a means to end poverty and drew upon a service ideology that stressed lawyers' autonomy and zealous advocacy. The NAACP and ACLU were political organizations forced to the courts by a lack of democratic opportunities. Political mobilization lawyers defined their service ideal through commitments to politics and the Constitution. Unlike the NAACP and ACLU, entrepreneurial lawyers used litigation as a primary strategy for social change. They used their knowledge to represent the public interest and create legal market niches. In the 1970s and 1980s, large law firms became involved in providing legal services to the poor in response to threats to the profession's legitimacy and autonomy. They embraced pro bono as a service ideal compatible with their business model.