Telephone = (202) 274-4320

FAX = (202) 274-4365 

 e-mail = nejl@wcl.american.edu 

Main NEJL website=              http:// nejl.wcl.american.edu

2001 Annual Report

(7)  NEJL Wall of Justice.

Over the past several decades the American Bar Association and the National Legal Aid and Defender Association have created a number of national awards recognizing lawyers and others who have made exceptional contributions to the pursuit of equal access to justice. But until now, nothing existed anywhere to permanently honor these awardees. Everyone applauds and recognizes what these heroes did to earn the accolade the year their awards are conferred. But memories soon fade and thus time diminishes the value of the awards — to the awardees, but more importantly to the rest of us who have so much to learn from the exceptional contributions--and often heroic deeds--these awards recognize.

The NEJL created its “Wall of Justice” to cure this problem. It dedicated the first two panels of the Wall at the same time the Library opened. Each award occupies a section on one of the two display panels located on the far right hand wall of the National Equal Justice Library. A plaque explains the name and purpose of the particular award and underneath the plaque appear the names of all recipients with the date they were honored. At this point, the awards are limited to those related to equal justice conferred by the American Bar Association or the National Legal Aid and Defender Association. In the future, however, we will consider adding relevant awards other organizations may give to honor exceptional contributions to the nation’s struggle toward equal access to justice.

The awards presently included on the NEJL Wall of Justice are: the ABA Pro Bono Publico Award given to private lawyers for outstanding instances of personal legal representation of the poor and underrepresented; the Charles Dorsey Award given to distinguished career legal aid administrators; the Clara Shortridge Foltz Award for outstanding public defenders; the Reginald Heber Smith Award for outstanding achievements by salaried lawyers serving the poor; the Arthur Von Briesen Award given to private lawyers for leadership in the legal aid field; the Harrison Tweed Award for state or local bars that have expanded access to justice; the Mary Ellen Hamilton Award honoring non-attorneys who have advanced legal aid or indigent defense, and the Kutak-Dodds Prize, a $10,000 award for outstanding contributions to equal justice. Each year the ABA and NLADA supply the current names to the NEJL and in recent annual announcements have started mentioning the fact awardees’ names will be added to the NEJL Wall of Justice.

In late 1998, the NEJL added a “Virtual Wall of Justice” to its website allowing Internet users anywhere in the world to view the awards and the awardees’ names. In the future, the NEJL hopes to acquire resources permitting it to install a computerized retrieval system that will allow library visitors to view the citations that earned the honorees these awards and to add that information to its “Virtual Wall of Justice” as well.