1:50: Gene Nichol, setting a modest tone for his address: \u201cIf George Bush taught us anything, it\u2019s the importance of diminished expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n
1:52: Nichol won\u2019t be measuring things, \u201cThe bigger I get, the less interested I get in measuring things.\u201d Crack at law students, who are bad at measuring things.<\/p>\n
1:54: \u201cThese are chilly times,\u201d Nichol\u2019s home state of NC is debating whether to establish a state religion. \u201cBut the only state religion in North Carolina is college basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n
1:55: The South has more poverty, and fewer politicians who care about it, than other regions.<\/p>\n
1:57: Gideon handed down almost exactly 50 years ago, by a Supreme Court willing to rethink major American traditions to intervene on the side of the powerless and marginalized, in contrast to the current trend of rethinking tradition to help the privileged.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
1:58: It seems \u201can obvious truth\u201d that poor defendants need counsel provided for them to be assured a fair trial, yet it was a truth ignored for centuries.<\/p>\n
2:00: Cast of characters involved in Gideon: Abe Fortas, John Hart Ely, even Walter Mondale (who gathered an array of state attorneys general to advocate for effective right to counsel).<\/p>\n
2:01: Then there\u2019s Gideon himself, \u201can appropriately biblical moniker,\u201d whom Anthony Lewis described as the one who \u201csaid boldly\u2026 I request this court to appoint counsel to defend me in this trial.\u201d<\/p>\n
2:04: \u201cthe largest single defect of the American system of justice\u201d is that the right to a meaningful hearing is still denied to so many.<\/p>\n
2:06: We could \u201cdramatically simplify rules\u201d and methods of resolution, but we choose not to. We are the outlier in this in the democratic world. What the European courts have done to guarantee right to counsel in civil courts is far beyond where we are. It puts us at a disadvantage to measure performance by what we do, rather than what we say.<\/p>\n
2:09: House Republicans cutting the Legal Services Corporation, apparently trying to send us even further down the list.<\/p>\n
2:10: Our poverty is skewed by race and by age (35% of children of color live in poverty). It shames us to have these facts stated out loud.<\/p>\n
2:12: To find our peers in inequality, you have to go to the bottom of the list, Turkey and Mexico. \u201cWe are the richest, the poorest, and the most unequal advanced nation in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
2:13: \u201cWe talk a good game\u2026 what we do has almost nothing in common with what we say.\u201d So Gideon mocks it, it is marginalized on the criminal side and ignored on the civil side.<\/p>\n
2:15: In law, unlike other fields, we promise that it can be different.<\/p>\n
2:16: Quoting Lincoln, we need to rid ourselves of \u201cthis base alloy of hypocrisy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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