(Un)Covering Identity in Civil Rights and Poverty Law
Vol. 121 No. 3
The effective delivery of scarce legal goods to disadvantaged clients
requires more than the provision of equal access, case-by-case representation,
and zealous advocacy. Scarcity requires that effective legal
change be measured not by the outcomes of individual cases, but
rather by the progress of social change: specifically, by the degree to
which individual clients are able to collaborate in local and national
alliances to enlarge civil rights and to alleviate poverty. This Essay
argues that, by incorporating the theory of “covering” into their work,
legal practitioners in civil rights and poor people’s movements can facilitate
such collective action. This Essay also makes the general claim
that forming links between theory and practice should be a principal
goal of clinical and nonclinical legal education.