Social Justice Mission

EJP was founded in response to the social justice emergency created by implementation of harsh welfare reform policies in New York City. The project works to counteract these effects with a combination of targeted individual representation and advocacy for systemic change, including legislative initiatives and related support for organizing and public education. EJP works in close collaboration with Welfare Rights Initiative (WRI) whose agenda includes both the immediate problem of access to education for poor people and the broader social justice questions concerning the nature and content of the public debate and political process relating to poverty, economic justice, welfare and the poor. We encourage the students to examine and struggle with the professional and social-justice implications of lawyering for the disempowered and lawyering within an unjust system, including consideration of client autonomy and client empowerment. We also ask the students to engage in a model of collaboration with WRI that places lawyers in a facilitative role and to consider and critique EJP as a model of lawyering focused in substantial part on support for an activist partner organization.