[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9878-9879]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                100TH ANNIVERSARY OF MARYLAND LEGAL AID

 Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, today I wish to recognize the 100th 
anniversary of the Legal Aid Bureau in Baltimore, MD. Legal Aid was 
founded in 1911 in Baltimore to provide legal representation for the 
poor. In 1929, Baltimore attorneys H. Hamilton Hackney and John A. 
O'Shea took over leadership of Legal Aid. Mr. Hackney believed that 
justice should not be a matter of charity. He believed that people 
should be secure in the knowledge ``that their poverty does not 
necessarily mean that they will be in a position of inequality before 
the law.'' As a result of Hackney and O'Shea's efforts, Legal Aid 
evolved from a charity organization to an independent, private, 
nonprofit corporation.
  During the Great Depression, Legal Aid's poverty practice mushroomed. 
By 1932, it was serving 3,200 clients a year. In 1941, the staff 
consisted of five lawyers. In 1949, the caseload had grown to 7,000 a 
year and Legal Aid helped its 100,000th client. In 1953, Baltimore City 
built its new People's Court Building at Fallsway and Gay streets, with 
the third floor dedicated to Legal Aid's use.
  The 1960s were a period of change. In 1964, Congress passed the 
Economic Opportunities Act and launched the war on poverty, funneling 
funds for legal services to the Nation's cities. In 1971, Legal Aid 
established three offices outside of Baltimore and later in the decade, 
across the State.
  In 1974, one of President Nixon's last acts in office was to sign 
into law the National Legal Services Corporation Act; the next year the 
Legal Services Corporation, LSC, was established, and legal services 
organizations across the country continued a rapid expansion. Starting 
in the late 1970s, Legal Aid began to champion the cause of migrant 
farm workers, sued the steel industry to eliminate practices that 
prevented women and minorities from getting higher paying jobs, and 
targeted the cause of mentally disabled people.
  In the 1980s, President Reagan sought to eliminate LSC, submitting 
seven straight budgets without an appropriation for the corporation. 
While some of the funding was restored by a sympathetic Congress, Legal 
Aid lost $1.2 million in funding in 1982, forcing staffing cuts in most 
offices. In response to the cuts, under my leadership, the Maryland 
General Assembly established the Maryland Legal Services Corporation 
and provided funding through the Interest on Lawyer Trust Accounts, 
IOLTA, Program to provide additional funding to Legal Aid and other 
legal services programs representing the poor.
  Under the leadership of Wilhelm H. Joseph, Jr., who took the helm in 
1996, Legal Aid has grown to be one of the Nation's largest and most 
respected legal services organizations. Today, there are more than 250 
staff members in 13 offices statewide. Last year, more than 60,000 
people from across the State were served, including residents of 
subsidized and public housing, the elderly, migrant farm workers, and 
neglected and abused children.

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  I would ask my colleagues to join me in congratulating Legal Aid for 
its outstanding achievements and service to the people of Maryland over 
the past 100 years, reminding us of the importance of the words 
inscribed over the entrance to the U.S. Supreme Court, ``Equal Justice 
for All.''

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