More and more Christians need to take responsibility by just being present to recognize that the disparity isn’t just God’s blessing. There is a lot of injustice that results in that. We need to think about, to really ask the question, what does it mean to be a great city? Or a great community? Does it mean certain people can make the city their playground or is it a place where everyone has an opportunity to participate and to be part of the rising tide of what’s going on economically?

I first became involved in access to justice issues when engaging in pro bono during my first year in law school at Georgetown. While at Georgetown, I volunteered a few hours a week for the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights & Urban Affairs, primarily conducting intake. I also became interested in interdisciplinary legal thinking in my first year in law school, though psychology has interested me for many years. Personal disclaimer: My wife is a professor in IU’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, and my father is, and my grandfather was, a psychiatrist. Indeed, but for being a lawyer, I might have been a psychologist!  

People are thinking about how to make the legal system work for actual people, and not just people with law degrees. We've still got a long way to go, but I am hopeful that we can begin to simplify access to our legal system as the years go on. The thought-experiment that we are doing is asking, "What would the legal system be like if it were made to be accessible?" Imagine that.