The Wyoming Road to Equal Justice

• Jurisdiction: Wyoming,United States
• Citation: Vol. 32 No. 1 Pg. 11
• Publication year: 2009
• Pages: 11

Wyoming Bar Journal 2009.

Vol. 32, No. 1, 11. The Wyoming Road to Equal Justice

Wyoming Lawyer
Issue: February, 2009

The Wyoming Road to Equal Justice

By Hon. Timothy C. Day

The Wyoming Supreme Court established the Wyoming Access to Justice Commission on December 16, 2008. This is a monumental step on the road to equal justice in Wyoming. The creation of a formal commission to assess, develop and coordinate resources to provide civil legal aid for the poor, the near-poor, and the disadvantaged embraces the reality that those who cannot afford a lawyer cannot afford justice Indigent litigants without counsel routinely forfeit basic rights due to the absence of counsel without regard to the facts or the law

This is not to say we are anywhere close to the ideal we seek to insure equal justice for all. In some respects not much has changed in the legal services landscape in Wyoming in the last several years, except for the worse. In December of 2001, the president's column of the Wyoming Lawyer painted a bleak picture of the unfinished business of insuring access to justice for all:

We have about fifteen lawyers in Wyoming Legal Services and the Wyoming Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault serving the poor (in non-criminal matters) in Wyoming, a population of between 50,000 and 55,000. Although they handle over 3,000 cases per year, it is estimated they only meet twenty per cent of the need in the income eligible population.(fn1) That is about the national average according to the ABA. This...