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A system that provides funding for legal representation for
poor people without causing a loss to anyone is sound policy,
and the Supreme Court said so last week.
The court ruled 5 4 that the Interest on Lawyers' Trust Accounts,
which provide financing for legal services for the poor, passes
constitutional muster. The program uses the old fashioned
method of generating interest on large sums of money to cover
the expenses of legal representation for indigent clients.
Lawyers are often required to hold clients' money in short
term accounts, which work like escrow accounts. The accounts,
if set up for each individual, would not yield enough interest
even to cover administrative costs. But years ago, state judicial
systems began pooling from those funds, thereby generating
a substantial amount of money.
The idea of pooled funds caught on and is now used throughout
the nation. The earnings are estimated at about $160 million
a year and are diverted to programs that provide legal services
to the poor. It helps the judicial system without any real
cost to anyone.
But a conservative attorneys group in Washington state argued
that using those funds amounted to taking clients' money in
violation of the Fifth Amendment. The government may not take
money without just compensation. But in these cases there
is no actual "taking" going on. Clients lose nothing.
The only difference is the accounts do gain.
Some conservative groups have led the opposition to the program.
They argue that the pooled funds use people's money unfairly,
in a way they might not agree with. One Supreme Court justice,
Antonin Scalia, even referred to it as a Robin Hood approach.
But Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, David
Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer saw it as a
fair way to raise funds and found that no one had been deprived
of their money if the system is properly run.
The program should be lauded as a common sense way to fund
legal services. The court was right to rule in its favor.
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