Einführung - Am MIT spezialisierte KI-Forschung

Einführung

John G. Levi & David M. Rubenstein

Emblazoned on the facade of the United States

Supreme Court building are four simple words in-
tended to embody the overriding principle of the
UNS. legal system: EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW.
Yet after more than 225 Jahre, the nation still has
not developed the means to fulfill this principle.

There are many reasons for that failure, but per-
haps foremost among them is that the legal system
does not ensure that all individuals with a civil legal
problem get access to and secure either competent
legal counsel or some other kind of help in address-
ing their problem. For people without adequate fi-
nancial resources or knowledge of the legal system,
there is a considerable chance that they will not be
able to afford or secure legal counsel or other help.
There is no constitutional guarantee of counsel in
civil matters parallel to what exists in serious crim-
inal ones.

Um sicher zu sein, the federal government, durch die
Legal Services Corporation, or lsc, and state gov-
ernments, through a variety of programs, have a
public goal of generally providing such counsel in
civil matters. But the reality often falls embarrass-
ingly short of the goal. The situation is actually get-
ting worse: because of funding shortfalls; Weil
those most in need of legal counsel are often un-
aware of their need for such counsel; and because
of the growing complexity of the civil legal system.
The lsc’s most recent survey of the justice gap–
the difference between the civil legal needs of low-
income Americans and the resources available to

john g. levi, a Fellow of the
American Academy since 2013, Ist
Chair of the Board of the Legal
Services Corporation and a Part-
ner at Sidley Austin.

david m. rubenstein, a Fel-
low of the American Academy
seit 2013, is Co-Founder and Co-
Executive Chairman of The Car-
lyle Group. He is also Chair of the
Board of the Council on Foreign
Rela tions and Chair of the Board
of the Smith sonian Institution.

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meet those needs–paints an alarming
picture. Der 2017 report found that some
71 percent of low-income households had
experienced at least one civil legal prob-
lem in the previous year, including con-
flicts around health care, housing condi-
tionen, disability access, veterans’ bene-
fits, and domestic violence. Jedoch, 86
percent of the civil legal problems report-
ed by low-income Americans in 2017 Re-
ceived inadequate or no legal help. And
due to scarce resources, those low-income
Americans who sought legal aid from lsc-
funded organizations received only lim-
ited or no help more than half the time.1
Another measure of the justice gap is
the rapidly growing number of unrep-
resented litigants, what Kentucky Chief
Justice John D. Minton Jr. called a “pro
se tsunami hitting the nation’s courts.”
The National Center for State Courts es-
timates that in almost 75 percent of civil
cases in state courts, one or both parties
go unrepresented.2 They largely forfeit
meaningful access to justice since they are
far less likely to prevail than represented
litigants, particularly when opposed by
parties with lawyers. In some courts, Das
imbalance is common: in housing court,
more than 90 percent of tenants facing
eviction have no lawyer, while more than
90 percent of the landlords do.

Yet people often do not realize that their

problem has a legal dimension. Human
miseries that could be alleviated continue
and cascade into disasters, jeopardizing
the legitimacy of the legal system itself.
This story would be even more distress-
ing if not for innovations in technology
and pro bono service. The development
of automated processes that provide law-
yers with user-friendly, form-preparation
assistance for the unrepresented; the cre-
ation of online court forms and develop-
ment of mobile apps to bring meetings
and hearings to litigants; and the expan-

sion of training and support for lawyers
taking on pro bono cases are among the
efforts that have helped civil legal provid-
ers stretch limited resources.

But as helpful as these developments
Sind, the nation’s one million lawyers will
never be enough to solve the access-to-
justice problem. And they shouldn’t be
expected to.

The American justice system belongs to
all Americans, not just lawyers. We must
find ways to reach out beyond the legal
profession to the greater public, to the
business, medical, Wissenschaft, engineering,
media, and other communities, to edu-
cate them about the gravity of this crisis.

While the legal-aid community and
some in government and academia are fo-
cused on the widening justice gap and the
formidable challenges to providing legal
assistance to low-income Americans, sehr
few others are. In communities concerned
about this crisis, there are powerful voic-
es, but no maestro to bring them togeth-
er. No one person or group is in charge or
responsible for seeing that the legal sys-
tem lives up to the expectations articulat-
ed at the country’s founding.

That is why this issue of Dædalus and the

American Academy’s project on Making
Justice Accessible are so important. Der
project is gathering information about the
national need for improved legal access,
and studying innovations piloted around
the country to fill this need, to advance a
set of clear, national recommendations
for closing the justice gap between supply
and demand for legal services.

The project will set a limited number
of significant national goals and priori-
ties for the improvement of legal access.
A strategic, and perhaps even more am-
bitious, purpose is to multiply the voices
addressing the access challenge and ele-
vate the discussion and efforts necessary
to meet these priorities and goals. Der

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Dädalus, das Journal der American Academy of Arts & SciencesIntroduction

fundamental objective is to bring the na-
tion closer to achieving what the Supreme
Court’s facade proclaims as the guiding
principle of the U.S. justice system.

For a century, the legal profession has
taken the lead in this effort. Jetzt, it is

time for national leaders in politics, busi-
ness, the media, and other influential sec-
tors to join, or rejoin, in this advocacy.
The justice gap is a matter of basic con-
cern and consequence for the nation.

Endnoten
1 Legal Services Corporation, The Justice Gap: Measuring the Unmet Civil Legal Needs of Low-Income

Americans (Washington, D.C.: Legal Services Corporation, 2017), 6.

2 Robert Grey Jr., “There is No Justice as Long as Millions Lack Meaningful Access to It,”
ABA Journal, August 30, 2018, http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/there_is_no_
justice_as_long_as_millions_lack_meaningful_access_to_it.

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148 (1) Winter 2019John G. Levi & David M. Rubenstein
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