Digital Commons Network^™

Striving For The Mountaintop: The Elimination Of Health Disparities In A Time Of Retrenchment (1968-2018), Gwendolyn R. Majette

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Health disparities in the United States are real. People of color are the adverse beneficiaries of these facts-lower life expectancy, higher rates of morbidity and mortality, and poorer health outcomes in general. This Article analyzes the laws and policies that improve and create barriers to improving people of color's health since the death of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968. The Article builds upon my earlier scholarship and considers the effectiveness of the "PPACA Framework to Eliminate Health Disparities" since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) was enacted in 2010.

The Article also explores the impact of …

Evictions, Aspiration And Avoidance, Brian E. Ray

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In December 2011 four of the Constitutional Court’s five socio-economic rights cases turned on evictions.2 The Court decided three eviction-related cases in the 2012 term and two more in 2013.3 For a Court that averages fewer than 30 decisions per term 10 decisions in less than two and a half years is an extraordinary level of attention devoted to a single area of constitutional law.4 Does this sustained attention to eviction cases harbinger a significant development in the Court’s approach to the right to housing in FC s 26 and to socio-economic rights more generally? The cases provide some evidence …

Courts, Capacity And Engagement: Lessons From Hlophe V. City Of Johannesburg, Brian E. Ray

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The case was one of the first applying the Constitutional Court’s holding in City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality v Blue Moonlight Properties 39 (Pty) Ltd and Another, (2) BCLR 150 (CC) (1 December 2011) (Blue Moonlight) that municipalities have an independent obligation to plan and budget for the emergency accommodation needs of people evicted from private property. The City also was the defendant in that case, and so its repeated failures to accommodate the occupants in Hlophe demonstrated a broader failure to implement the planning, budget and policy requirements that flowed from Blue Moonlight. Judge Satchwell recognised this and issued …

The Deficit Reduction Act Of 2005 - Reducing The Number Of Recipients And Applicants Eligible To Receive Medicaid Benefits, Christal Contini

Journal of Law and Health

Medically impaired individuals such as George, as well as disaster victims, mentally handicapped persons, homeless persons, and foster children, will be adversely affected by the new citizenship documentation requirements imposed upon the states by the Act. States will also be adversely affected by the increased administrative costs of implementing the Act's requirements. This note asserts that aspects of the citizenship verification requirements treat citizen applicants worse than immigrant applicants, which violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Amendments should be made to the United States Code and the Code of Federal Regulations to ease the burden on individuals …

State Discretion Under New Federal Welfare Legislation: Illusion, Reality, And A Federalism-Based Constitutional Challenge, S. Candice Hoke

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article challenges the common characterization of the 1996 welfare reforms. States do not have the ability to do “almost anything they want.” Most notably, states with more compassionate political leadership who wish to counter the national trend may seek areas of flexibility in vain. The Act's mandates and penalties will force all states into particular policies that they may not have chosen had Edelman been correct about the range of their discretionary powers.Edelman's critique typifies the standard assessment of the Act. According to the prevailing view, the Act's policies are objectionable because the federal government has capped the money …

Advocacy Strategies In Social Welfare Policy: Homelessness, Barbara Sard

Cleveland State Law Review

I currently direct the homelessness unit at Greater Boston Legal Services after having been a welfare lawyer for fifteen years. When I first started teaching at Harvard about six years ago, I taught a course on Welfare Law. There is a value in teaching homelessness law as a discrete topic rather than lumping it under the traditional topics of welfare law or housing law. Initially, when I started teaching at Harvard, my goal was to impress the students with the fact that a poverty law subject like Welfare Law was as complicated doctrinally as anything else that they might learn. …

Rehabilitation Of Drug-Dependent Persons, Paul A. Lichtman

Cleveland State Law Review

In today's fast-paced society, we are the witnesses of a very unusual phenomenon. People are consuming drugs at a rate never before realized. Stimulant drugs are being taken to keep the individual going during the day. Depressant drugs are being ingested to help the individual bury his anxieties. Drugs have been developed for practically every form of illness, whether organic or psychological. The majority of people who do use the various kinds of legend drugs do so legally, under a physician's supervision. There is am growing minority, however, who abuse drugs to the extent that these individuals become what is …

Job Refusal In Unemployment Compensation Claims, Robert J. Bowers

Cleveland State Law Review

Unemployment compensation is a type of insurance. As such, it does not cover losses intentionally incurred by claimants. However, the spirit of the Social Security Act of 1935 and of similar laws enacted in all the states affect the qualification or disqualification of a claimant who refuses a job. The broad discretionary powers of administrators and boards of review preclude definitive answer. We must be content with awareness of the tolerance limits indicated by stare decisis and commission rules.