Illegal Services

When Congress passed restrictions on the Legal Services Corporation, the LSC called in its lawyers.

“THERE has been overheated rhetoric from those who want to kill legal services for the poor. . . . There have been abuses; we all know that. . . . That is all in the past.” So spoke, in July 1996, Republican Congressman Jim Ramstad of Minnesota, one of 56 Republicans whose votes enabled the Democratic minority to restore $109 million to the budget of the Legal Services Corporation (LSC). Only a year earlier the House had voted to phase out funding for the LSC over three years; at that time it seemed as if the new Republican Congress would make good on the promise of its conservative leaders to eliminate federal funding for this holdover of 1960s-style political activism.

About the Author

Rael Jean Isaac

Rael Jean Isaac is a co-author, with Virginia Armat, of Madness in the Streets: How Psychiatry and the Law Abandoned the Mentally Ill.

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Department of Justice

When Congress passed restrictions on the Legal Services Corporation, the LSC called in its lawyers.

“THERE has been overheated rhetoric from those who want to kill legal services for the poor. . . . There have been abuses; we all know that. . . . That is all in the past.” So spoke, in July 1996, Republican Congressman Jim Ramstad of Minnesota, one of 56 Republicans whose votes enabled the Democratic minority to restore $109 million to the budget of the Legal Services Corporation (LSC). Only a year earlier the House had voted to phase out funding for the LSC over three years; at that time it seemed as if the new Republican Congress would make good on the promise of its conservative leaders to eliminate federal funding for this holdover of 1960s-style political activism.