Two weeks ago, the Honorable Jonathan Lippman, Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals (New York State's highest court), stood before some thousand members of the Philadelphia Bar Association, who had gathered for our quarterly meeting in the ballroom at the Bellevue Hotel in Philadelphia.  

Judge Lippman started slowly, with individual stories of people who go to court without lawyers and lose their children or their homes; the individual stories cascaded into thousands and tens of thousands as New York's rate of poverty mounts. As we listened, he transformed the numbers into tragedy.  

"Each day in our courthouses we see the fallout from the economic downturn reflected in dockets surging with new foreclosure, eviction, family offense, consumer debt and criminal cases. This flood of cases carries with it the futures of millions of New Yorkers - many of limited means, including families, children and the most vulnerable members of our society - all seeking justice and often fighting for life's most basic needs, people who have nowhere else to turn to but the courts to protect their fundamental rights. They come in record numbers at the very time that courts and judges are stretched thinnest, when New York's economy and business climate are at their weakest. And it is our constitutional obligation - ours alone - to hear and resolve every single one of these matters with fairness, speed and wisdom."

Judge Lippman went on to make his basic point: the piecemeal efforts to supply counsel, tried in New York and elsewhere, are simply not working. "I came to the conclusion," he carried us along, "that providing counsel to our citizens is as much a state function as education and environmental protection. This is a fundamental obligation that should be built into our state budget, just like any other core function."

This was bold thinking and moving talk, but Judge Lippman has not stopped with thinking and talking. Exercising his leadership as the highest judicial officer of one of the country's largest and most prestigious court systems, he took his message around New York State, holding hearings, gathering support, and building momentum. He proposed a $100 million addition to the state budget to fund private counsel and, although he did not get the full amount, he persuaded New York's legislature to increase that funding in a budget otherwise subject to deep cuts.

I recount Judge Lippman's remarkable journey, not just because of its immensely important subject, but also because of the inspiration it offers: as voters, we can demand of our federal and state legislatures and (in Pennsylvania) elected court officials, that they protect and nourish our most vulnerable fellow citizens. As community and business leaders, we can create and lead our own initiatives.  

And as vital members of the Law Center's community, we take our own steps to redress society's large inequalities: from testimony by Adam Cutler favoring long-overdue regulation of dangerous mercury emissions from power plants (that the EPA has now adopted); to a class action lawsuit designed to improve the education of some 3000 children with autism in the School District of Philadelphia, to studies bolstering the core claim of our lawsuit in Florida: that children enrolled in Medicaid do not have access to doctors and dentists. Our strength is derived directly from you, our financial and volunteer supporters. Thank you!  

Very truly yours,