Over at Concurring Opinions there is a great post about the back story for NAACP v. Button. Excerpt:
In much the same realist mindset, Professor Mark Tushnet flagged the practical and constitutional significance of the public interest-litigant aspect of Button. “In the barratry case,” he wrote, “the Court endorsed the form of public-interest law practice that [Charles] Houston, [Thurgood] Marshall, and their colleagues had created. . . . [Button] offered the Court and the profession two models of ‘reform’: a transformation of traditional standards that would have restricted the development of public-interest practice, and a transformation that promoted it.” (This general topic is explored at greater length is this article by Professor Susan Carle.)