Michigan Wolverines head coach Jim Harbaugh is known to be interested in the justice system. In 2013, he was in the audience on an episode of Judge Judy and three years later, endorsed Judge Sheindlin to be nominated to the Supreme Court.
On Thursday, Harbaugh is going to Washington D.C. to speak on behalf the Legal Services Corporation, a nonprofit that provides funding for civil legal aid to low-income Americans who otherwise can’t afford such representation.
Harbaugh will be joining LSC leadership along with senators Ben Cardin and Tim Kaine to release the findings of a study that shows the “justice gap” is widening in part to the COVID-19 pandemic. The LSC is set to advocate for more government funding in order to better help close that gap.
This is a cause that Harbaugh has taken seriously and took steps to better understand the justice system in recent years. He collaborated with the LSC in 2017 where he first got into justice system fairness and clerked for a Flint, Michigan judge where he asked questions and saw how the sausage was made. For better or worse.
When he was in Washington the first time, Harbaugh said the following about what he felt was an issue about “fundamental fairness.”
“As I see it, if you have money, you have access to justice,” Harbaugh said. “If you don’t have money, you have less access to justice. That’s not the way it should work.”
