Word: oeo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...then-Vice President Spiro T. Agnew berated the head of the Legal Service Program over a suit brought by a local agency against the city of Camden, N.J., to halt construction work on a number of urban renewal projects. Agnew criticized the right of poor people to use OEO-paid lawyers to sue elected officials...
...President Nixon announced plans in 1973 for the dismantling of OEO, the consensus in Congress was that the Legal Services Program should be made an independent corporation insulated from political pressures. Amendments were passed to prevent lawyers from legislative lobbying and from litigating in favor of either abortion or school desegration. One measure even prohibited lawyers from rioting or engaging in any civil disturbances...
...real question in the minds of most government officials was just how much independence the corporation's lawyers should have to participate in political activities and to litigate on behalf of controversial social issues. With the termination of OEO set for mid-1974, Congress began discussion in June 1973 on what form the independent corporation should take...
...most strident criticism, however, was directed not at the neighborhood attorneys themselves but at the eighteen legal services back-up centers located throughout the nation. These centers, most of which were established through OEO grants made to selected law schools, were set up to provide specialized research services to aid local units on complex suits. A neighborhood lawyer with a tenant-landlord problem might turn to the National Housing and Economic Development Law Project in Berkeley, Cal.; an attorney working on a welfare case might call up the Center of Social Welfare Policy and Law in New York; an agency...
...Representatives. "When we pass a bill to provide legal aid for the poor," she asked her fellow representatives, "does it mean that we should also finance, using millions of dollars, research centers aimed solely at changing social policy? The Harvard research center actually had attorneys, who were paid with OEO funds, doing the research which led to their joining as co-sponsors with the NAACP in the Detroit segregation case... Meanwhile, Congress is overwhelmingly opposed to busing." Then, finishing with a flourish, Green declared that "these offices have become the cutting edge for social change in this country...