Justice Ginsburg Remembrance
September 28, 2020
One Justice Ginsburg quotation that particularly hits home for me, as someone whose job it is to provide legal help to people unable to afford a lawyer, is her admonition that lawyers have “an obligation to provide legal services to those without the wherewithal to pay, to respond to needs outside themselves, to help repair tears in their communities.”
If there were ever a time we needed lawyers to fulfill that obligation, to repair the tears in the community, it is now. The pandemic and the resulting economic devastation are literally tearing our community apart. As lawyers. we can help mend these tears and put our community back together.
We can help keep people housed rather than thrown out on the street in the wake of a pandemic. We can ensure that arguments over child custody and visitation rights do not end in violence but are resolved in the best interests of the child. We can secure benefits for people with disabilities who cannot survive without government assistance.
Justice Ginsburg never failed to fulfill this sacred obligation throughout her career as an advocate, a judge, and a justice. There is no better way to honor her legacy than to ensure that justice is not a commodity reserved for the privileged.
