Review 4: The Right to Justice by Charles K. Rowley
Reviewed by:
Jim Powell,
Laissez Faire Books, (December 1995)
The government-funded Legal Services Corporation was touted as a noble means to help the poor achieve equal rights, but instead it enabled powerful bureaucrats to promote their crazy welfare state agenda at taxpayers' expense.
In this shocker, public choice economist Rowley reports how Legal Services Corporation attorneys sued to stop research aimed at improving agricultural productivity.
They sued to prvent government high schools from using literacy tests as a requirement for graduation. They sued to have large amounts of private property - including two-thirds of Maine - returned to Indians.
That's not the worst of it. Rowley tells how Legal Services Corporation attorneys zealously hyped government spending, got more people on the welfare rolls and facilitated the break-up of families, thereby perpetuating chronic poverty. He tells how Legal Services Corporation attorneys have filed suits which undermine the ability of minority parents to control teenagers, contributing to violent crime.
Although Congress and Several presidents have tried to rein in the runaway Legal Services Corporation, Rowley reveals how its attorneys have brazenly violated laws.
The Legal Services Corporation is peanuts in terms of the overall budget, but as Rowley shows, it's an absolutely outrageous case of a tyrannical bureaucracy which exploits taxpayers with impunity.
Rowley enriches his analysis by applying insights from public choice economists at the University of Virginia and empirical economists at the University of Chicago.
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