Gavel Grab

At the midyear conference of the American Bar Association, leaders continued to spotlight the crisis in state court funding nationwide and approaches to confront it.

In a call to action, Curtis Child, director of Governmental Affairs at the California Administrative Office of the Courts maintained that the courts “need to be in throwing elbows” with their legislatures, on behalf of adequate funding, according to an ABANow.org account of the session.

Both ABA President Wm. T. (Bill) Robinson III and James R. Silkenat, ABA president-elect designee, also talked about court funding, and there was discussion of the ABA “building bridges around the topic—including to business, and organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce and The Federalist Society,” according to a second ABANow.org article.

The impact of difficult economic times on access to justice for low-income people was another major concern raised at the conference.

For the most vulnerable Americans, a crisis in access to justice has resulted from a steep increase in the number of people living in poverty combined with a major decline in funding for legal aid services, a panel of judges and attorneys said, as reported by a third ABANow.org report.