On August 13^th, the National Association of Counsel for Children, through Board President Dawne Mitchell, presented Proskauer with its President’s Award in recognition of the Firm’s commitment to justice as counsel in the Matter of Lawyers for Children v. New York State Office of Children and Family Services. In that case, the New York Court of Appeals struck down regulations that would have created a new state-run system for parents to place their children with strangers without critical statutory safeguards, including court oversight and appointment of counsel. The following excerpts are from remarks I made when accepting this important honor on behalf of the Firm.

I’m here because I won a straightforward case, seven‑nothing in the Court of Appeals, based on a very basic principle of law that regulations cannot conflict with a statute. The State tried to impose a shadow foster care system through regulation, and it was completely unlawful. Easy case.

Okay. If the law was so clear, why did it take three years of litigation? If the law was so clear, why was our case dismissed three times by the lower courts before it got to the Court of Appeals? If the law was so clear, why did the regulator put forward regulations that conflict with the statute and all the rights built over many years that were secured for children?

I think this case demonstrates something bigger, something that everyone in this room should be concerned about. Obviously, there’s a widely held belief that our system is broken and that the court system is somehow part of the problem. I agree completely that, in many ways, our system is broken, and I believe that we do have a second‑class system of justice for vulnerable people in this country, for sure.  

Here’s the danger: their solution was to throw out court oversight; their solution was to throw out appointment of counsel; their solution — the regulator’s solution — was to throw out essential services for families and children. They wanted, in their words, to “transform and modernize the child welfare system,” but they wanted to do so outside of the court system. And, along the way, a lot of people thought that that was a good idea, and that’s why the litigation lasted for three years.

The danger isn’t that they’re going to abolish the family court. When we got to the Court of Appeals, that Court made sure that the law was enforced, so I’m not worried about that. This is what the real danger is, in my view. If people believe that the court is the crux of the problem, they’re less likely to support reforms and additional resources and services that we desperately need to make the system actually work.

There’s no substitute for court oversight. There’s no substitute for appointment of counsel, and there’s no substitute for due process. We need to strengthen our court system and not tear it down. We need to make the court work for everyone, including children.

In New York City, we have 67 family court judges for about 150,000 filings every year. We place an impossible burden on the court system. And then when it doesn’t work, we say the system is broken and we want to abolish it? We need more resources, we need more services, we need more judges, and we need more lawyers.

And that brings me to all of you. I want to thank you for this honor. I especially want to thank the Legal Aid Society, Lawyers for Children, and Legal Aid of Buffalo. They gave me this wonderful opportunity— unfortunately because we kept losing — to argue before the Court of Appeals. And when I was standing in that courtroom —a  beautiful courtroom in Albany, New York — before the seven judges who were all extremely well‑prepared and knew the law, I honestly felt that I could solve all of the world’s problems right there. Now, in fact, I couldn’t solve any of the world’s problems. I simply won an easy case.

Most importantly, I really want to thank all of you for the important work that you do every day. It’s not the individual clients you serve as much as it is the role that you play in our justice system. And that role is worth fighting for. Thank you.