A Quote by Martha Minow

I see, from my vantage point as the vice-chair of the Legal Services Corporation, a serious crisis going on in this country. Eighty percent of low-income people have no access to the civil justice system, meaning anything but criminal law.

Martha Minow

Quote Topics

Access Anything Chair Civil Corporation Country Criminal Law Crisis Eighty Going Income Justice Justice System Law Legal Low Low-Income Meaning People Percent Point See Serious Services System Vantage Vantage Point Vice

Quote Author

Martha Minow
American - Professor
Born: December 6, 1954

You think about the Pledge of Allegiance, "liberty and justice for all." This is at the core of the American creed. The creation of the Legal Services Corporation was a recognition that low-income people have trouble being able to afford a lawyer.

Martha Minow

One in three young African American men is currently under the control of the criminal justice system in prison, in jail, on probation, or on parole - yet mass incarceration tends to be categorized as a criminal justice issue as opposed to a racial justice or civil rights issue (or crisis).

Michelle Alexander

The American people do not want people thumbing their nose at the law. It undercuts the very fabric of our society and the system of civil justice and of criminal justice as well.

Ernest Istook

From what I can see it's that, if you have money you have access to justice. If you don't, it's becoming increasingly less and less access for low-income Americans and that's the crux of it. I mean, to have a society that has liberty and justice for all, it's right there in the constitution.

Jim Harbaugh

The criminal justice system - although this applies less to the U.S., where rehabilitation is not seen as a valuable contribution to criminal justice - in Europe where rehab is supposed to be integral, we have no way of rehabilitating skilled hackers. On the contrary what we do is we demonize them and continue to do so after they come out of jail because we restrict their access to computers by law. Crazy world, crazy people.

Misha Glenny

All lawyers are going to have to - if we really want to attain civil justice - address the issue of how complicated we have made the laws: what we have done to ensnarl the American people in bureaucratic rules and regulations that make access to services or compliance with the law sometimes difficult, if not impossible.

Janet Reno

Expanding eligibility of family planning services to low-income women will maximize cost-savings to both federal and state governments, reduce the disparities in access to family planning services for low-income women, and decrease the incidence of abortion in the U.S.

Rosa DeLauro

Just in general, when we look at our school system, there is so much overlap with our criminal justice system in terms of our low-income youth.

Dana Goldstein

Black people are dying in this country because we have a criminal justice system which is out of control, a system in which over 50% of young African American kids are unemployed. It is estimated that a black baby born today has a one in four chance of ending up in the criminal justice system.

Bernie Sanders

Whether low-income people are dealing with access to veteran's benefits, or a protective order to guard against domestic violence, or a way to guard against the loss of their home due to foreclosure and unscrupulous behavior by mortgage providers, there's no way they can afford a lawyer. And that's a serious problem. Because that erodes respect for law, it erodes the prospects for justice.

Martha Minow

You know, the elites always want to shame the poor - right? - and everyone else. I mean, the fact is, this economy is based on 70 percent of the people driving consumer demand. If people do not purchase goods and services, this economy will grind to recession. And that is why, if you are going to do a tax cut, it ought to really be aimed at low-income and middle-income people.

Keith Ellison

When I was a prosecutor in Kansas City, my job was to fight for justice and safety for all citizens in my community. Equal access to justice under the law is an American value embedded in the fabric of our legal and political system - the idea that anybody, powerful or not, can have their day in court.

Claire McCaskill

This is a very important issue that the corporate media chooses not to talk about a whole lot, that we have an economic system which is rigged, which means that at the same time as the middle class of this country is disappearing, almost all of the new income and wealth in America is going to the top 1 percent. You have the top one-tenth of 1 percent owning almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent - 58 percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent.

Bernie Sanders

Given the inefficiencies of what DC laughingly calls the 'criminal justice system,' I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.