Excerpt from Equal Access to Justice Act of 1979, S. 265 Senate, Subcommittee on Improvements in Judicial Machinery, of the Committee on the Judiciary, Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:55 a.m., in the Tucson City Council chambers, Tucson City Hall, Tucson, Ariz., Senator Dennis DeConcini (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Also present: Romano Romani, staff director, Subcommittee on Improvements in Judicial Machinery, and Pamela Eldred, counsel. Senator DeConcini. The Subcommittee on Improvements in Judicial Machinery will come to order. Opening Statement Of Senator DeConcini I want to thank the city of Tucson, the other fine people who helped us set this up, the clerk and the secretary for the city council, the mayor and the city council, and I also want to thank Senator Kennedy for authorizing these hearings to be held in Arizona and New Mexico by the Judiciary Committee and by the subcommittee, and the ranking members of those committees, both the Republicans and the Democrats, for their support of these hearings. It is a real pleasure to be back in Tucson today to hold hearings onS. 265, a bill that is pending before the Subcommittee on Improvements in Judicial Machinery, which I chair. Senate bill 265, which is titled the Equal Access to Justice Act; represents a vital weapon in our struggle to tame Government regulations, and I hope it will mark a new era in the development of a responsive and responsible bureaucracy. Under this bill, if the citizen prevails in a civil action or agency proceedings brought by or against the U.S. Government, he or she will be able to recover attorneys fees from the Government unless the Government can show that its actions were substantially justified. The fee award will come directly from the operating budget of the offending agency. The purpose of the bill is twofold. First, it is intended to provide citizens with effective legal and administrative remedies where none now exist. It is clear that in many situations under the present law, citizens do not have viable remedies. It simply costs too much to resort to agencies or court proceedings to vindicate our rights. Under these circumstances the only realistic alternative left to the citizen is to capitulate to the Government, even when you believe the Government is wrong, unreasonable, or irresponsible. The bill is intended to overcome those financial obstacles and thus to provide citizens and small businesses with an opportunity to stand up for their rights. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.