Thread by @GalvinAlmanza

This is an important perspective on the Westfall Act. But it's also much more than that, in the way @tribelaw speaks on the relationship between access to justice and the health of a democracy (indulge me in a super short thread where I relate this back to public defense)

https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1417161457427525641

The law is only the law in that it is *perceived* as the law. The way people *experience* our legal structures is, in fact, the way they exist in the real world--and the way most people experience the law is as byzantine, protective of the powerful, oppressive to the powerless.

The subject matter here is the limit of "official duty" and of course we know that Trump stretched that notion harder than he stretches his golf pants, and this resulted in the widespread perception that the law is nothing more than tool of the ruling class.

But for us to be a functioning democracy, we need to have some feeling that we the people--all the people, including the historically excluded, the oppressed, the imprisoned, the silenced--have some ability to be treated as equal and empowered before our government.

We are SO FAR FROM THAT. And this op ed is deeply insightful in that the actions of DOJ right now can take us farther. But the actions of DOJ in another way--in expanding access to justice in the context of indigent law--can also take us closer.

What I mean is, when we humanize the system, slow it down, fuck up its ability to prioritize efficiency over justice, make the voices of the historically excluded LOUD AND UNAVOIDABLE, as we seek to go with @PFJ_USA--we start to expand who gets to be "we the people" and...

Hand the law back to the people, empower the people, create the feeling that we, too, have a town square or a courthouse in which to be heard and seen, and, crucially, *re legitimize law in America.*

Yes, corruption of the executive branch has broken legitimacy. But also policing has broken legitimacy.
Prosecution has broken legitimacy.
Prison has broken legitimacy.
Probation and immigration and school to prison pipelines have broken legitimacy.

The only way to get that back is to make people feel like the wheels of power are not allowed to silently crush them, which means making good choices at DOJ, as @tribelaw argues, but also making the choice to invest in public defense, eviction defense, immigration defense.

And yes, to invest in programs that give people power, capacity, and the kind of resources they need to force the system to recognize their full humanity.

That's the only way we're going to find our way back to health, as a nation & as a system of law.

partnersforjustice.org