Georgetown Law
Georgetown Law Library

Histories of Civil Legal Assistance in the United States and Globally

Histories of Legal Assistance for the Poor in the United States

* Felice Batlan. Women and Justice for the Poor: A History of Legal Aid, 1863-1945. Cambridge University Press, 2015. (An important challenge to the conventional narrative of the history of legal aid in the United States.)

* Alan Houseman and Linda Perle. A Brief History of Civil Legal Assistance in the United States. Revised December 2013. 

* Alan Houseman and Linda Perle.  A Brief History of Civil Legal Services for Low-Income People in the United States. Revised 2018

* Earl Johnson Jr. To Establish Justice for All. The Past and Future of Civil Legal Aid in the United States. 3 vols., Praeger-ABC-Clio, 2013. (The standard history of federally funded legal aid in the U.S.)

* Shaun Ossei-Owusu, “A People’s History of Legal Aid: A Brief Sketch,” in: The Routledge Handbook of Poverty in the United States (London and New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015): 378-386. (An important recent article based on the author's dissertation research, challenging the conventional narrative of the history of legal aid in the United States.)

Special Collections

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Special Collections
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