The interpretation of the law and the Constitution is the main task of the judiciary when it acts within the limits of its powers to resolve a case or controversy. Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803) (“It is expressly for the Department of Justice to say what the law is”). An informed and independent judiciary requires an informed and independent bar association. However, under section 504(a)(16), cases are submitted by LSC lawyers who cannot advise the courts on serious questions of validity. The obstruction contradicts the suggestion that counsel should present all reasonable and well-founded arguments necessary for a proper resolution of the case. By seeking to prohibit the analysis of certain points of law and to shorten the presentation before the court, the order in question prohibits statements and statements on which the courts must rely in order to properly exercise judicial power. Congress cannot wrest the law from the Constitution, which is its source. “Those who then challenge the principle that the Constitution should be regarded as the law of primacy before the courts are reduced to the need to claim that the courts must turn a blind eye to the Constitution and see only the law.” Id., p.
178. LSC fellows consist of hundreds of local organizations, usually run by local councils. In many cases, fellows are funded by a combination of LSC funds and other public or private sources. Beneficiary organizations hire and supervise lawyers to provide free legal assistance to clients in need. Each year, LSC provides funding to beneficiaries who hire and supervise lawyers for a variety of professional activities, including representing impoverished clients seeking social benefits. The United States and LSC rely on Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.P. 173 (1991), in support of restrictions on the LSC program. In Rust, Congress created program clinics to provide grants to physicians to counsel patients on various topics related to family planning. However, Congress did not consider abortion part of its family planning goals and prohibited doctors employed by the program from discussing abortion with their patients. Id., pp. 179-180.
Recipients of funds under Title X of the Public Health Services Act, §§ 1002, 1008, as added, 84 Stat. 1506, 1508, 42 U.S. V. §§ 300a, 300a-6, challenged the restriction of the law that none of the funds in Title X allocated to family planning services “may be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning.” § 300a-6. Beneficiaries argued that the regulations constituted undue discrimination favoring an anti-abortion stance rather than a pro-abortion approach to family planning. 500 U.S., at 192. They also claimed that Congress imposed an unconstitutional condition on recipients of federal funds by requiring them to give up their right to employment. The only conceivable argument that can be used to distinguish him from Rust is that even patients who want abortion counseling could receive the non-abortion services offered by the publicly funded clinic. whereas here, some potential LSC clients who wish to be represented in a benefit claim that does not challenge the articles of association cannot do so because their case raises a request for reform that an LSC lawyer cannot submit. This distinction is, of course, required by the same ethical principles that the Court does not wish to distort elsewhere. Instead of promoting “abbreviated representation,” Congress chose 546 to subsidize only cases where the lawyers it subsidized could work freely.
See, for example, 42 U.S. v. § 2996 (6) (“Lawyers providing legal assistance shall be free to protect the best interests of their clients”). And it is impossible to see how this difference from Rust affects the First Amendment question, which, to repeat, is whether the funding system is “manipulated” to have a “coercive effect” on those who do not hold the subsidized position. National Endowment for Arts v. Finley, 524 U. S., at 587 (cited Arkansas Writers` Project, Inc. v. Ragland, 481 U. S., at 237 (SCALIA, J., dissenting)). Such an effect could be invoked if, in a matter not eligible to represent LSC, the client could eliminate the inadmissibility by waiving the claim that the law is invalid; But he can`t.
A conceivable coercive effect is not conceivable. This case concerned an in-depth examination of the system of protection of rights of action for the payment of interim payments to legal representatives representing persons supported under the civil legal aid scheme in force in the 1990s under the former Legal Aid and Advice Act 1948. Section 1 of the Act stated that the general purpose of the legal aid system was “to initiate legal representation or otherwise participate in litigation, lobbying or rule-making involving efforts to reform a federal or state welfare system, except that nothing in this subsection shall be construed as preventing a recipient from representing a beneficiary of a entitled client. which requests a special exemption from a social authority, if this exemption is not intended to modify or call into question in any other way the existing law, the law in force at the time of the initiation of the representation. » (1991).