By Chief Justice P. Scott Neville, Jr.
A Swahili folktale tells of a poor man who owned almost nothing except a goat. Each evening, he sat down to a bowl of plain porridge. Nearby, a wealthy man’s kitchen filled the air with the smell of food the poor man could only dream of eating. Taking in those wonderful smells seemed to make his meager meal taste better. So the poor man began sitting outside the wealthy man’s house to eat his porridge.
When the wealthy man demanded the goat as payment for the smells, the dispute went before the village elders. Asked to explain himself, the poor man looked at the ground, frightened and unable to speak. The elders found a fair solution: if the poor man had enjoyed the smell of the wealthy man’s food, the wealthy man could enjoy the smell of the poor man’s goat.
The story has a happy ending. Yet one part deserves a closer look. The poor man could not defend himself. He did not know what to say. Having rights and knowing how to protect them are two different things.
Today, throughout Illinois, people enter our courthouses with serious problems. They may be about to lose their home. Families may be in trouble. Livelihoods may be at stake. Despite having a valid claim or defense, they may have no idea how to assert it. We sometimes talk about access to justice as though opening the courthouse doors solves the problem. It doesn’t. A person can walk through those doors and still have no idea what to do next. That is where lawyers come in.
At the University of Illinois College of Law, the Illinois Supreme Court will announce a new effort to help people facing housing problems and to prepare future lawyers to serve them. Working with the University of Illinois College of Law, Northern Illinois University College of Law, and Southern Illinois University Simmons Law School, the Court has approved Housing Justice Clinics to serve communities throughout our state. Law schools will work together and share what they learn.
The need is there, but we do not have enough lawyers to meet it. In much of Illinois, the problem is finding a lawyer at all. Even where lawyers are nearby, legal representation remains out of reach for many residents. Imagine what these clinics will mean for people who otherwise might have nowhere to turn. A home, after all, is where a family gathers, where children sleep, where daily life unfolds.
The clinics can change people’s lives. They will also shape future lawyers. Under the supervision of lawyers and faculty, students will put their legal education to work for people at a vulnerable time. They will learn something every good lawyer learns: knowing the law is one thing; knowing what to do with it is another.
Equal justice is a promise. This announcement is one way our profession will help keep it.