I’d like you to imagine for a moment
that you are a 38 year old man from
Syria who has watched your country
dissolve into horror and war around you
you escaped just over a year ago into
Turkey where you’ve actually been
providing services to other refugees
while you go through the extensive
vetting process to seek asylum in the
United States
your wife is actually already living in
Long Beach California because she got
asylum last year and she’s there with
your two year old son who’s a United
States citizen and whom you’ve met only
once you finally get the news that
you’re approved and you book your flight
from Istanbul to Los Angeles for January
29th 2017
now unbeknownst to you just two days
prior the new president of the United
States has signed an executive order
that put into place the first Muslim
travel ban so by the time you arrive at
the Istanbul Airport you are swept up in
the worldwide chaos that has ensued and
nothing is clear except that no airline
will allow you to board a flight to the
United States I became connected to this
young man and his story just about a
year ago today in the days just after
the Muslim travel ban I was part of an
international group of attorneys and
advocates and elected officials
connected only by email but fighting to
reunite him with his family you see
something kind of amazing happened with
lawyers last January like maybe you saw
some of the news footage of lawyers of
all people camped out at airports
working overnight on laptops they
flooded by the thousands into airports
around the world to provide legal help
to passengers and families impacted by
the travel ban lawyers became first
responders and for this brief moment in
time centuries of lawyer jokes were set
aside
well I had the American easing privilege
of being one of these lawyers helping to
coordinate the legal clinics that popped
up overnight at the Los Angeles and San
Francisco international terminals you
see I became a lawyer specifically to
fight for the rights of people like this
young man and his family and I share his
story with you today because it is one
example among many of the promise of the
American civil justice system and also
because I’m here to tell you that in
this moment in time in our country’s
history that system needs your
generation to be aware to be informed
and to be active watchdogs to protect it
now I need you to set aside for a moment
everything that you know about the
criminal justice system because we’re
going to talk about the other side about
civil justice and the best way that I
can think about civil justice is it’s
this beautiful promise that we actually
make to each other about how we’ll
handle things when we disagree so if I
ran from a landlord who refuses to fix
the broken toilet in my apartment and
it’s spewing raw sewage back into my
bathroom well we don’t handle that
disagreement by resorting to our own
means me wrecking the apartment out of
anger or him showing up with a baseball
bat to violently throw me out or to
intimidate me into silence instead in
this country we agreed to hand that
whole disagreement over to an outside
third-party decision maker a judge and a
court who will listen to our stories and
then weigh the facts and the law and
then hand us a decision we also agree
winner or lose or that when that this
decision is handed over we will both
follow it you see this is a great
equalizer in our country a system that
can adjust for the inherent imbalance
and power and privilege in our society
it’s one of the core pillars of American
democracy
it’s an enforcement mechanism for the
promise that we make for liberty and
justice for all
but for that promise to ring true for
the civil justice system to work it
require
two things they require something called
the rule of law and it requires all of
us as ordinary citizens to hold it
accountable now there’s been a lot of
talk in the news recently about the rule
of law which is just this some ideas
from our Constitution first that we will
be a nation of laws that means that
we’re governed by laws and were not
governed by the whims or the
proclamations of a king or of a dictator
the second is that each and every one of
us regardless of our race ethnicity
gender sexual orientation religion
social economic status really any group
or individual characteristic we shall
all be equal under the law and the last
idea is that the rule of law applies to
all of us as individual people it also
applies to corporations and most
importantly of all and this is not true
everywhere in the world it applies to
the government including the president
so this means the civil justice system
is totally the place that can decide my
disagreement with my landlord over that
broken toilet
it also means though that if a company
produces something that harms you or me
or a group of people we can all take
that harm into the civil justice system
and that system can decide whether the
corporation did something wrong and what
should happen if it did and if the
President of the United States does
something that harms a group of people
that system may decide whether the
president did something wrong and what
should happen if he did he said that
systems sit squarely on the rule of law
and that’s the power in the system but
the system is also fragile it’s fragile
because also at its heart it’s just this
ephemeral promise that we make to each
other that the government in turn makes
to all of us you see when the system is
working it’s just like oxygen we need it
to survive but it’s invisible all around
us but if we take that system for
granted if we stop being the active
watchdogs to protect it well it can
weaken and completely erode
but so what does it even mean to be an
active watchdog for a civil justice
system I mean like what can we do well
the first is we have to be aware you
have to know the system exists you have
to make the oxygen visible and the
second is to be informed you have to
know how the system works and what the
risks are to it and what protections
exist let me talk about it like this
when I was a kid I did not appreciate my
parents rules especially when I was
caught breaking them and when I got in
trouble oh I would argue with my parents
I would tell them that their rules were
not fair I would tell them that they did
not apply their rules equally between me
and my sisters and I never won a single
one of these arguments I inevitably just
ended up in more trouble and being sent
downstairs to my room and every time
when I got to the bottom of those stairs
I would stop trembling with this
righteous indignation and I would always
yell the same phrase back up the stairs
to my parents what about kids rights
what about kids rights I don’t even know
what I thought I meant by that phrase I
just I wanted to be heard right I wanted
to protest I wanted justice and now
apologies to my parents but their rules
were arbitrary right they were allowed
to be right you guys know parents are
the dictators and the kings in a family
system they are allowed to make the
rules up as they go along my parents did
not have to be fair to me they did not
have to give me a hearing to air my
grievances but that feeling that feeling
of righteous indignation that was real
and can you imagine for a moment what it
would be like if our civil justice
system operated the way my parents rules
did I mean what if the the rules the
laws were not written down and posted
online where we could all read them and
understand them but they were kept in
some backroom they were only available
to the people who already had power or
what if the decision-makers the judges
were not fair but heavily influenced by
local politics and their relationships
or even bribes
what if ordinary people like you and me
were never allowed into the room
where our voices might be heard that is
actually how courts in some countries
work so what what keeps that from
happening here
well we had the Constitution and we have
200 years of history of the system being
in place but I think the most basic
fundamental protection for our civil
justice system is you and me
you see generations of Americans have
fought to protect our civil justice
system some in times of greater
challenge than others and I am Telling
You that in this moment in time in our
country’s history it needs you more than
ever to be aware to be informed to be an
active watchdog and that means holding
the system accountable to be accessible
not only to you not only to me but to
anyone who needs it as if our system is
the great equalizer under law then it is
deeply wounded if there are people who
cannot access it
let’s think about it this way when I was
a kid in elementary school I loved the
parachute game and my favorite moment
was when we’d all stretch the fabric way
up over our heads right and then you
turn around inside and whip it down as
fast as we could and make that mushroom
balloon tent thing with all of us tucked
inside for me our civil justice system
is that parachute moment you know Martin
Luther King said that the arc of the
moral universe is long but it bends
towards justice but I don’t think bends
towards justice on its own I think it
takes all of us stretching up and
grabbing on and we work together to bend
the arc by pulling and just like the
parachute it takes all of us and that’s
what I’m trying to do as a lawyer to
grab a hold of my piece of the parachute
and Bend that arc and I do this in a
portion of the civil justice system
called legal aid or legal services we’re
a network of nonprofits and our whole
mission is to make sure that ordinary
people and especially people who are
low-income get full access to that civil
justice system
now there are five million low-income
Californians who will experience at
least one pressing legal problem each
year that relates to a basic life
necessity but let me tell you only
lawyers think about these things as
legal problems for the people
experiencing them they are just life
problems I complain to my landlord about
the toilet and instead of fixing it he
serves me with eviction papers or a
young woman who has just left an abusive
relationship and she is terrified by the
idea that her abuser can find her at her
job or the Vietnam veteran who’s living
on the streets because he’s been denied
the housing benefits and the medical
care that he needs all of those people
are experiencing life problems that just
happened to have legal solutions and far
too many Californians cannot afford to
hire an attorney to get the legal help
they need and unlike the criminal
justice system we are not entitled to a
lawyer to be appointed for us in the
civil justice system even when our most
basic needs are at issue so these people
are shut out of the civil justice system
they are far outside the parachute
because they cannot afford it and so
legal aid nonprofits legal aid lawyers
provide them with that legal help for
free legal aid lawyers are first
responders every day they show up when
people have a legal crisis whether it’s
standing in the courtroom with that
survivor of domestic violence or even in
the crisis centers after the recent
wildfires and last January legal aid
lawyers were at the heart of the legal
clinics in the SF and LA airports so it
was no accident that last February 3rd I
was sitting in the SFO clinic emailing
spirit still with that Syrian father who
was still stuck in Istanbul there was a
moment where Boston was the only Airport
allowed to passengers and he was
actually standing in line to board the
last flight out of Istanbul to Boston
when he suddenly emailed our group that
the airline personnel had come over and
they were trying to pull him out of line
because they thought the window of
timing was too tight
our group wrapped it into activity it
was this heart-stopping moment and
suddenly my phone started buzzing with a
news alert because this remarkably
American thing had just happened a civil
court issued a national order that
prevented the travel ban from putting be
put into place
a civil justice court had listened to
the stories weighed the facts and the
law and handed over decision that the
government the president had to obey so
he immediately got all of the
information about this decision to that
young father and he was able to convince
the airline to allow him to board and
with his permission I’d like to share
with you the words that he sent to all
of us as he was boarding that fight dear
all no matter how much I talk it will
not be enough to celebrate your efforts
it is a dream that I finally get to see
my wife and my son this was a hard
experience and I am sure that your
efforts will win in the end
breaking all fake walls between human
hearts and so this this is what the rule
of law exists to do what civil justice
strives to do what legal aid has the
power to do to break down all the walls
that exist between our most human hearts
but it takes all of us to be champions
of this civil justice system now is not
the time to stand at the bottom of the
stairs now is the time to grab the
parachute be aware be informed demand
that the civil justice system in this
country work for you and for me and for
all of us regardless of who we are what
we have or where we come from thank you [Applause]