Legal Aid Needs in Newburgh, New York: A Survey of Legal Requirements of Persons Unable to Pay for Services, as Found in Twenty-Four Agencies, January 1 to May 12, 1954, With a View Toward Determining the Advisability of Establishing a Legal Aid Society in the Community
Abstract
Man is a complex creature. Through the centuries he has developed a complex way of life. He has devised complex societies in which to live. He has established communities, states, nations and global organizations. He has discovered many secrets of the natural universe, and leashed them to his use. He has instituted councils, and governments, and corporations by which to manage his complex affairs. But in the midst of the complexities of these myriad offspring of his fertile brain, he has remembered that he, Man, is composed of men, of individuals, with rights, with responsibilities, and with limitations. He has created giants, of industry, of commerce, of government. But he did not create them that they might become his master, and turn on him, and trample him. In all the bigness of his creation, he has remembered to protect the microcosm within himself. He has evolved the concept of justice, and has instituted the concept and reality of law to protect the individual. When men set out to form communities and states, they realized the necessity of incorporating into their very foundations instruments for protecting the members of society. We are not concerned here with the early manifestations of this realization with the trial and error evolution of law in man’s early development. We are at this point concerned with the functions of law here and now — in the United States in the twentieth century. Two basic documents on which our society is based attest to this realization. On June 15, 1215, our cultural forbears declared in part, that "No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or disseized, or outlawed or banished...unless by the lawful judgement of his peers, or by the law of the land." And again, that "We will sell to no man, we will not deny to any man, either justice or right."
Subject Area
Law|Social work
Recommended Citation
Hatch, Phillis Jane, "Legal Aid Needs in Newburgh, New York: A Survey of Legal Requirements of Persons Unable to Pay for Services, as Found in Twenty-Four Agencies, January 1 to May 12, 1954, With a View Toward Determining the Advisability of Establishing a Legal Aid Society in the Community" (1957). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI30557634.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI30557634
