Whether low-income people are dealing with access to veteran's benefits, or a protective order to guard against domestic violence, or a way to guard against the loss of their home due to foreclosure and unscrupulous behavior by mortgage providers, there's no way they can afford a lawyer. And that's a serious problem. Because that erodes respect for law, it erodes the prospects for justice.

I see, from my vantage point as the vice-chair of the Legal Services Corporation, a serious crisis going on in this country. Eighty percent of low-income people have no access to the civil justice system, meaning anything but criminal law.

I think the problem is, if we foreclose any public justice, then we cut off the virtuous cycle that's represented by law, where there are public decisions which then deter misconduct in the future. We need to have both. We need to have private dispute sy-, systems, and we need to have public dispute systems.

I have to be honest and say members of both political parties have contributed to de-legitimization of the process. Even President Barack Obama when he was a senator, contributed to it, in the sense of voting against a well-qualified individual because he disagreed with the view. Again, that's the prerogative of the senators. They're allowed to express their views on any basis.

In I'm Not A Racist, But..., Lawrence Blum offers answers for our time about what race is, who is a racist, and ways for people to talk about the racialized features of our society without falling into name-calling or defensiveness. With exemplary moral and analytic clarity, Blum offers educators, students, lawyers, judges, leaders, and citizens tools for building a nation of equality, comity, and respect for each person.

Of course, in the states, about half the states elect their judges, and that's an even more direct involvement with politics. But I think it's not the same as the elections of many other candidates. People who run for the judiciary, I think are pretty careful to indicate that they will adhere to the rule of law.

That's a really sad moment. When people in a democracy are afraid of having the conversation, because it might actually lead to a conclusion they don't like, as opposed to saying, let's have the conversation, and let's learn, and, you know, let's, let me try to persuade you, and if I'm not persuading you, then you try to persuade me. That's what we hope for.