It was in 1988 that the idea of the NEJL was first introduced by Justice Earl Johnson, Jr., a judge on the California Court of Appeals, at a meeting of the Board of the National Legal Aid Defender Association of which he was a member. The importance of such a repository was driven home when public defender members of the NLADA board reported that the papers of Clara Shortridge Foltz, credited with founding the public defender system in the United States and the first woman lawyer in the western states, had been destroyed by her family who did not realize the papers’ historic significance. The American Bar Association, NLADA, Association of American Law Schools, and American Association of Law Libraries formed a Joint Exploratory Committee a to develop the project. In 1990, this committee evolved into the Consortium for the National Equal Justice Library CNEJL, a District of Columbia nonprofit corporation and began searching for a host institution. After considering applications from three DC area law schools, in 1991 the CNEJL board chose Washington College of Law of American University to house the new collection. Because of delays in the locating and renovating a suitable new building for the Washington College of Law, the NEJL did not open until September 1997.

Address: 111 G Street, NW,Washington, D.C., 20001
Telephone: (304) 535-6985
Website: http://www.equaljusticelibrary.org.cnchost.com/