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Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Legal Aid Agencies Are Indispensable
By John D. Robb
Attorney, Albuquerque
New Mexico and the federal government stand at the threshold of making budget decisions, which include large potential budget reductions affecting the courts and legal aid agencies that could inadvertently and adversely affect some of the basic protections which underlie the governments of both New Mexico and the United States. This letter addresses a few of those threats.
I ask by this letter Republican and Democratic legislators both in New Mexico and in Congress, the governor of New Mexico, all bar associations and lawyers, to protect from further budget cuts the courts and the legal aid agencies that are the primary protectors of the rule of law.
The rule of law which is foundational to our government requires all governments and persons to obey the laws. It separates both the New Mexico and federal governments from the totalitarian and many other governments of the world that do not comply with it. In short, budget cutting cannot be an excuse for partially disabling or dismantling this vital basic foundation.
I speak as a Republican, and from my special, unique privilege as a former chief advocate of New Mexico committees, of the New Mexico Bar, of the American Bar Association, and as a lawyer in private practice who has participated actively in support of the courts and of legal aid for more than 50 years. Among other things, I was particularly fortunate that my role in the ABA was serving as one of its main representatives and proponents in the creation and later in the defense of the National Legal Aid Program as well as the National Legal Services Corporation.
District Judge Alan M. Malott made this case for the courts, as he also quoted Chief Justice Charles Daniels of the New Mexico Supreme Court, in his excellent article in the Feb. 21 Journal Business Outlook concerning the courts' key roles as primary enforcers of the rule of law. Karen Meyers, assistant attorney general of New Mexico for consumer protection, also powerfully made the case for the indispensable role of legal aid agencies in furthering the rule of law in her prepared acceptance remarks at the University of New Mexico Women's Law Caucus Dinner on Feb. 17, where she received the Justice Mary Walters Award before a packed house at the UNM School of Law.
I heartily add my own independent passionate views as to these studied conclusions, including the belief that without the services of legal aid agencies, which are a primary provider of information required by the courts to discharge this duty, the rule of law and the justice system could not effectively operate.
The local, New Mexico, and national legal aid agencies, by their advocacy and information in presentations to the courts on behalf of poor and low income Americans, are an indispensable part of preserving the rule of law for all of us and for a very large segment of the population of New Mexico and of the nation who are poor. My views are based upon long-standing experience, occasionally at high levels, but mostly in the trenches of extensive trial practice for the Rodey law firm before these courts and in legal aid volunteerism.
The above legal aid agencies do indeed advance the issues of many outstanding welfare agencies and institutions for those in poverty. But it is wrong simply to include them as only another poverty agency in the budget process when a main purpose for their existence is to preserve the rule of law and equal access under the law to those courts by these strong champions of upholding the corollary fundamental principle of equal justice for all under the law.
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