The first time I went to court, as a brand new lawyer, I represented a tenant who was being sued for eviction by the local housing authority. My client was not in court with me that day because she had no transportation. I offered her a ride, but she did not show up at my office that morning. As I left the courthouse I was very glad to have a few minutes alone. The judge had ruled against us, in favor of the housing authority, because I had not been allowed to raise any defense on my client’s behalf. As I got in my car, I tried to formulate a way to tell my client that she had twenty-four hours to vacate her apartment.
When I got back to the office, my client was in the waiting room. I sat down beside her and told her that we had lost, that she would need to get out of the apartment immediately. She asked me, “Where will I go?” I had no answer. She had no family, no close friends, not even a car in which to sleep. Eviction from subsidized housing is the deadest of dead-ends.
For me, this was an inauspicious beginning to a legal career that has actually gone fairly well. For the client, on the other hand, it was one long step toward joining the ranks of the homeless. That feeling of utter helplessness has never left me.
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The woman was frightened. She came to the clinic with a folder full of papers from her landlord. She was old enough to be everyone’s mother.
The student attorneys, with the ink still damp on their certificates from the Florida Supreme Court,1 treated her courteously. They puzzled over the legal significance of the notice from her landlord, analyzed the terms of her lease, pulled out the statute books, and fired up the Internet connection to do some preliminary research. They were searching for a legal solution to a problem that could have come out of a casebook or appeared on a law school exam.
And then one of the student attorneys found a connection—her Philadelphia accent. Suddenly, she was not a walking, talking legal problem. She was a person with shared memories of cheesesteaks and the kids’ television show Chief Halftown.
The Public Defender’s Office of the Sixth Judicial Circuit of Florida, Pinellas County, operates the Homeless Outreach Program to reduce the needless incarceration of individuals who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. This Article is intended to serve as a guide for others who may wish to learn from or replicate the program. It will discuss the program’s origins, its problems, and its measurable results as of December 31, 2005, as well as its future goals. The program’s flyer, distributed at shelters and service sites around Pinellas County, asks in bold letters, “Are You Worried About Going to Jail?” and reflects the program’s main objective—reducing the population of homeless individuals in jail. Individuals in the target population are repeatedly arrested in Pinellas County for reasons other than actual law violations.
The most common reasons are failure to pay fines and failure to appear for court hearings.
Wetland conservation is a national and international legal imperative. Wetlands provide a variety of “functions” in the natural environment and a number of “values” for human beings. Beyond their intrinsic value, wetlands serve as habitat for fish and wildlife, help to recharge groundwater and enhance water quality, and aid in the control of flooding and erosion. Wetlands also provide educational and recreational opportunities for human beings, including hunting, fishing, and boating. The prairie potholes of North Dakota, one of the prime examples of isolated, intrastate wetlands, provide between fifty and seventy-five percent of the waterfowl in America, thus contributing substantially
to the hunting industry. The destruction of such wetlands has led to a corresponding decline in migrant duck populations.
Historically, wetlands have been undervalued, leading to estimated losses over the last 200 years of approximately fiftythree percent of the wetland areas across the United States. While the rate of loss slowed somewhat in recent years, the United States continued to lose wetland areas at a rate of 58,500 acres per year between 1986 and 1997. This “areal” calculation does not include any reduction in “function and ecosystem integrity.” In response to these losses, various levels of government have implemented wetland protection programs and policies, including Section 404 of the Clean Water Act (CWA) and state wetland protection laws. Governments have also taken action to protect individual wetlands through outright purchase from landowners and have engaged in extensive public education programs. Various international efforts also aim to protect wetlands and reduce the rate of wetland losses worldwide, most notably the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance Especially as Waterfowl Habitat (Ramsar).
Antidumping law has been referred to as the “third rail” of United States trade policy. With American political rhetoric overwhelmingly equating the imposition of harsher antidumping duties with the expansion of fair trade, dumping issues have played a major role in the negotiation of virtually every modern international trade agreement. In most circumstances, the United States has succeeded in protecting the power of its administrative agencies, particularly the Department of Commerce, to investigate instances of alleged dumping and to levy antidumping duties on those foreign producers that sell goods in the United States for less than fair value. However, in recent years the conflict over zeroing, a controversial methodology the Department of Commerce uses in the calculation of dumping margins, has garnered
increasing attention in both United States courts and international dispute resolution fora.
Theresa Marie Schiavo died on March 31, 2005, at about 9:00 a.m. It is unlikely that she ever could have imagined the truly bizarre events surrounding her passing from this world. Indeed, when we first conceived of a conference and symposium concerning the Schiavo case, we certainly did not have any conception of the twists and turns the matter would ultimately take. In the years leading up to her death, Terri Schiavo’s situation was discussed and debated at every level of the federal and Florida State governments. The legal and political saga surrounding Terri Schiavo’s death was simply extraordinary and beyond prediction.
I have twenty minutes to discuss the implications of the Schiavo case!1 I think it’s fair to say that in taking this case, when Mr. Schiavo walked into my office eight years ago, I wouldn’t have had the slightest idea that I’d now be standing up here while the case was still pending, talking about it.
I don’t want to talk too much about the specific details of the Schiavo case. Instead, I’ll focus on its broader trends and implications. My entry into the Schiavo case was through the Browning case, which many of you may be familiar with, which is Florida’s landmark right-to-die or right-to-refuse-unwanted-medical-treatment case, a case that I argued before the Florida Supreme Court in the late 1980s.
As we look at the case of Terri Schiavo, we are dealing with some far bigger issues, quite candidly, than whether someone wants medical treatment or wants to refuse medical treatment. Let me begin by laying out a factual backdrop because I think the facts are a very large component to understanding the Schiavo case.
Number one, Terri is as alive as you are. You may be sitting here thinking, “Well, I’ve heard she is on a ventilator; she is being kept alive by tubes, and so on.” But as we sit here today, Terri Schiavo is every bit as alive as you and I.
The central question that really derives out of that litigation is whether the courts have a monopoly on protecting the weak and the handicapped, or whether there is a role for the executive branch and the legislative branch in protecting the frail and the vulnerable in our society against the possibilities of exploitation or neglect.
The Rule in Terri’s Case speaks as much to the substance of the law as it does to the political climate that surrounds it—and does so more expressly, indeed, more openly and notoriously than is often the case in United States jurisprudence. The undercurrent of profound enmity that existed between the husband of a severely brain damaged woman and her parents and siblings combined with political and spiritual timeliness to create a perfect storm for the most volatile and litigated end-of life case in United States history. Make no mistake about it: the
Theresa Marie Schiavo case was about right-to-life and abortion as much as it was about privacy, autonomy, death with dignity, and the rights of family members.