Harvard’s Laurence Tribe to spearhead initiative opening up legal access for the poor
By Pete Yost, APFriday, February 26, 2010
Harvard professor Tribe to join Justice Department
WASHINGTON — Harvard University law professor Laurence Tribe, a nationally renowned constitutional scholar who once hired Barack Obama as a research assistant, is joining the Justice Department to spearhead an initiative aimed at opening up legal access for the poor.
Tribe’s prominence in the legal community — he has been lead counsel in 35 cases before the Supreme Court — will help elevate an issue that Attorney General Eric Holder regards as vitally important.
In an address last week at the National Symposium on Indigent Defense in Washington, D.C., Holder said the constitutional right to court-appointed legal counsel for people who cannot afford to hire a lawyer remains an unrealized goal nearly half a century after a landmark Supreme Court ruling on the subject.
“All of you have read the reports and know the data,” Holder told the symposium. “When lawyers are provided to the poor, too often they cannot represent their clients properly due to insufficient resources and inadequate oversight — that is, without the building blocks of a well-functioning public defender system,” as described by the American Bar Association and the National Juvenile Defender Center.
Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said the new access-to-justice initiative will help fulfill a responsibility to ensure effective legal representation for all parties in the courts.
Two Justice Department officials, who would speak only on condition of anonymity because Tribe’s appointment has not been announced, confirmed Tribe will be senior counselor for the initiative and said that he will start work Monday. Tribe did not immediately return a call to his office Friday.
Tribe has focused much of his appellate work over the past several decades on access-to-justice cases. He has advocated for policy and legislative changes to protect victims rights.
Now 68, Tribe received tenure at Harvard University at age 29 and was one of the youngest people to hold the title of law professor at the university.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Tribe recalled Obama as a student. Harvard Law School had plenty of achievers trying to edge out their competition but that wasn’t Obama’s style, Tribe said.
“He was not at all about credit but results,” Tribe recalled of the future president. “He would often give credit to others that he did the work for.”
