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Representing Homeless Families: Repeat Player Implementation Strategies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Beth Harris
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Extract

The leverage provided by litigation depends on its strategic combination with inputs at other levels. The question then is whether the organization of the profession permits lawyers to develop and employ skills at these other levels. (Galanter 1974:151)

Without any ability to pose a credible political threat, poverty lawyers have become adept at squeezing resources out of hostile agencies and legislative bodies at all levels of government. (Diller 1995:1427)

In mounting reform suits, Legal Services lawyers are not properly understood as autonomous, outside agents attempting to impose rationality on the administration of public welfare services over the opposition of a universally hostile state. (Katz 1984:189)

In 1974, Marc Galanter examined the strategic role of public interest lawyers in helping the “have nots” come out ahead in the legal system. Galanter argued that, to become agents for social change, lawyers must recognize that their role as advocates extends beyond the courtroom into the implementation process (Galanter 1974:151). This article analyzes the efforts of one group of public interest lawyers—those working in Legal Services agencies dedicated to law reform—to influence the implementation of redistributive programs for a particular group of “have nots”: homeless families or those on the brink of losing their housing. Based on my studies, I argue that by skillfully combining adversarial legal tactics with collaboration, poverty lawyers can transform judicial decisions into “symbolic resources” to leverage the implementation of redistributive remedies. When the reform lawyers have the authority to participate in the process of administrative rule making during the implementation process, they can reshape the norms and organizational infrastructures within state agencies.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 33 , Issue 4: Do the “Haves” Still Come Out Ahead? , 1999 , pp. 911 - 939
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by the Law and Society Association

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Footnotes

I am grateful that the Institute of Legal Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School invited me to participate in the “Do the ‘Haves’ Still Come Out Ahead?” Conference (1998), which provided a fertile environment for the development of this article. I thank Michael McCann, Susan Silbey, Herbert Kritzer, and the anonymous readers for their editing guidance. I continue to appreciate those advocates, organizers, and activists who are supporting efforts of the “have nots” to resist the “mobilization of bias” against them in every venue and at each stage of the political process.

References

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