Legal Movement Research Articles

Accountability in Broadcasting

A survey of legal structures, media councils, access movements, and research mechanisms designed to enhance broadcaster responsiveness.

Labor and Liquidators: Revolutionaries and the “Reaction” in Baku, May 1908-April 1912

In the years after 1905, Social Democrats in Russia agonized over the form of struggle in which to engage. The defeats suffered in the revolution and the new legal possibilities offered after 1905 led to strains among the socialists and changed considerably the nature of their debates from the prerevolutionary years as each faction attempted to deal with the potential of a legal labor movement and the actuality of continued police repression. Paradoxically the years of “reaction” were also the seedbed of Russian trade unionism. Many Social Democrats, most notably the so-called likvidatory (“liquidators”), believed that the time had come to concentrate on the legal labor movement, to broaden its appeal and deepen its roots among the working class. Others, tied to the traditions of the underground party and the primacy of political work, opposed the new reliance on legal activity. All Social Democrats inside Russia were faced with the reality of economic depression, a decline in labor activism, and political repression. They faced together a strategic dilemma. The deeper they retreated into the underground, the more tenuous their ties with the workers became. Yet the more actively they engaged in trade unionist and other legal activities, the more vulnerable they were to police persecution.

Thoughts on the Legal Aid Movement

Thoughts on the Legal Aid Movement

Military Government for Japan

of thinking that the war situation not favorable to us . . . People who harbor and uphold defeatist and war-weary ideas, people who get tired of fighting and who don't care whether they lose or not, are far from being nonexistent today. The general's preferred solution for this kind of dry rot on the home front is to force all these wayward ones into the IRAA and, if this does not work, to use the bludgeon more freely. Others approach the problem more gently, but just as anxiously. The Koiso government, faced with the failure of Tojo's gestapo tactics in smothering popular discontent, has made some few gestures in the direction of freer expression of public opinion. Koiso was impressed by the strong statement of Okada, Speaker of the House of Representatives, who warned that too strenuous oppression may lead to an explosion, or may cause the release of many wild rumors which can finally turn into a movement that will become a national disaster. Koiso has promised that he will not suppress any legal or desirable public movements in the future.

International Legal Aid Work

MOST of the articles in this volume record actual accomplishments that have taken place in the field of legal aid work. International arrangements designed to secure the necessary legal assistance to poor persons who find themselves involved in international litigation have not yet been made effective and this article, accordingly, can do no more than state the general nature of the problem and the definite steps that have been undertaken for its solution during the past two years. In a real sense this plan for international legal aid work when consummated will stand as the crowning and ultimate achievement of that impulse for a more equal justice that, as has been told elsewhere, originated in New York in 1876 and has ever since been called the legal aid movement. The end of this interesting story cannot be written in an authoritative way until two or three years hence, but the project has already advanced so swiftly and so definitely along the lines charted for its development that ceriain forecasts as to the final outcome are warranted.

The Historical Background of the Legal Aid Movement

The Historical Background of the Legal Aid Movement

The Philadelphia Legal Aid Bureau of the Department of Public Welfare

W HEN the Bureau of Legal Aid was established August 1, 1920, as a branch of the city Department of Public Welfare in Philadelphia, the volume of cases increased immediately from 6991 handled annually by the private society, to 13,404, being the total of the first year's business under public control. This amazing growth was the more notable because the private society had been functioning in Philadelphia for seventeen years, and the municipal undertaking was considered somewhat as an experimental venture. The citycontrolled agency had not as yet been accepted by the national leaders of the legal aid movement as a logical method of solving the problem, in large populous centers, of assisting worthy persons of limited financial means to a settlement of their legal difficulties without