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rights, that we hold fundamental today." "Reflections on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution," 101 Harvard L. Rev. 1, 1 -2 (1987). Social movements driven by a quest for effective rights built social justice lawyering organizations that really took off in the 1960s. As they evolved, they changed the way that lawyers practiced and thought. As Oliver Houck observes, the lawyers had clients and the clients were injured, but also [there] was a larger sense of justice that is as difficult to define precisely as it would be to deny. Most importantly, they did not simply seek compensation for their clients; increasingly they sought to change the law." Thus, the phrase "law reform" described the efforts of such lawyers as those involved in the three large movements in poverty, civil liberties, and civil rights practice. Yet, because rights are indeterminate, legal advocacy has continually reshaped the conception of rights to be more effective in advancing social justice. Beyond legal rules, social justice claims have viewed rights as expressions about how people should be treated —as norms and values rather than fiats. According to Martha Minow, under this conception: "Rights" can give rise to "rights consciousness" so that individuals and groups may imagine and act in light of rights that have not been formally recognized or enforced. Rights, in this sense, are neither limited to nor co- extensive with precisely those rules formally announced and enforced by public authorities. Instead, rights represent articulations— public or private, formal or informal—of claims that people use to persuade others (and themselves) about how they should be treated and about what they should be granted.... [1] include within the ambit of rights discourse all efforts to claim new rights, to resist and alter official state action that fails to acknowledge such rights, and to construct communities apart from the state to nurture new conceptions of rights. Rights here encompass even those claims that lose, or have lost in the past, if they continue to represent claims that muster people's hopes and articulate, their continuing efforts to persuade. Consciousness, or cognizance, of rights, then, is not simply awareness of those rights that have been granted in the past, but whispered or unheard have become claims, and claims that once were unsuccessful, have persuaded others and transformed social life. The connections between past and future claims of rights are voiced through interpretations of inherited understandings of rights. Interpretation engages lawyers and nonlawyers in composing new meanings inside and outside of legal institutions. Charges against new rights express opposition to this interpretive process. "Interpreting Rights: An Essay for Robert Cover," 96 Yale L. J. 1860 (1987). Under this conception of social justice rights /claims, which is consistent with international human rights assertion, rights potentially enhance our collective consciousness, change our cultural and institutional habits, mobilize people beyond the courtroom, organize political groups at the grassroots, force those in power to account for their actions. Rights join with culture, power, conscience, and human dignity as expressions of social justice. Herein lies the transformative potential of rights claims. 111. How is social justice manifested? How could it be manifested? These questions, in turn, must be addressed in the context of a local government's capacities and overall functions and objectives. Where does social justice fit within the institutional behavior of county commissioners who are accountable to principles of right action and serving the people of the county in concrete ways? ...... ......... ......... ......... .. .... ORANGE CDUNTYSOCIAL JUSTICE GOAL REPORT, _ ... , , Page 25 of" . _ .,....