Earl Johnson Jr. served as Justice on the California Court of Appeal for a quarter century, retiring in 2007 for the express purpose of researching and writing a history of civil legal aid in the United States, a three-volume under the title “To Establish Justice for All: The Past and Future of Civil Legal Aid in the United States” (2014). Johnson earned his B.A. with Honors in Economics from Northwestern University, his J.D. from University of Chicago Law School where he was book review editor of the University of Chicago Law Review, and his LL.M. in Criminal Law from Northwestern University School of Law. Johnson started his legal career as a federal prosecutor in the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, bust shifted to the legal service field when he became Deputy Director of Washington’s Neighborhood Legal Services Project (now Program) in 1964. He served has the Director of the War on Poverty’s OEO Legal Services Program from 1966-68, then as a Professor of Law at the University of Southern California where he also directed the Program on Dispute Resolution Policy at USC’s Social Science Research Institute and was a visiting scholar at the University of Florence’s Comparative Law Center where he worked with Mauro Cappelletti on the Florence Access-to-Justice Project. He co-drafted the first version of the Legal Services Corporation legislation which, after many changes and the hard work of others, eventually passed as the Legal Services Corporation Act in 1974. Johnson’s research resulted in several books and a dozen articles on the subject of legal aid and access to justice, including authoring “Justice and Reform: The Formative Years of the OEO Service Program” (1974) and co-authoring “Toward Equal Justice: A Comparative Study of Legal Aid in Modern Societies” (1975). After his appointment to the bench in 1982, Johnson published several more articles on legal aid and chaired the state bar’s “Access to Justice Working Group” which led to creation of the California Commission on Access to Justice in 1997. Founding chair of National Equal Justice Library at Georgetown Law School which collects and preserve the history of legal aid in criminal and civil cases. Former chair and board member of the California Access to Justice Commission. Member, steering committee of the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel.
REGIONAL COORDINATOR - NORTH AMERICA
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