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Articles 1 - 9 of 9
Full-Text Articles in Law
Whither The Canaries: On The Exclusion Of Poor People From Equal Constitutional Protection, Julie Nice
Whither The Canaries: On The Exclusion Of Poor People From Equal Constitutional Protection, Julie Nice
Julie A. Nice
While neoliberal orthodoxy posits that a rising tide of economic growth will lift all boats, a sea change began in the United States around 1970 that marked the end of our social commitment to shared prosperity and the beginning of the steady widening of income inequality to its current historic level. In response, poor people might have been expected to turn to the courts for protection against the perennially pervasive prejudice against them, especially considering their relative—if not absolute—lack of political clout. But the Supreme Court had virtually closed the courthouse door in Dandridge v. Williams, affording to poor people …
Poverty As An Everday State Of Exception, Julie Nice
Poverty As An Everday State Of Exception, Julie Nice
Julie A. Nice
This essay applies the provocative theory of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben to Poverty Law. It is forthcoming as a book chapter in a multidisciplinary volume of papers exploring the relations between accumulation and insecurity. Professor Nice distills Agamben's theory of the state of exception, that the dominant paradigm of modern democracy is founded on the state's power to exclude from rights those who are otherwise included within the political order. Professor Nice posits that the state's abandonment of poor people exemplifies an everyday example of the state of exception. She illustrates how poor people lack meaningful constitutional protection, legal entitlement, …
Forty Years Of Welfare Policy Experimentation: No Acres, No Mule, No Politics, No Rights, Julie Nice
Forty Years Of Welfare Policy Experimentation: No Acres, No Mule, No Politics, No Rights, Julie Nice
Julie A. Nice
This essay is drawn from a keynote address for a symposium on Ten Years After Welfare Reform: Making Work Pay. The keynote was delivered on the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., who was then on the cusp of launching his Poor People’s Campaign. Professor Nice argues that the momentum toward a meaningful anti-poverty movement was stymied by the untimely deaths in 1968 of both Dr. King and the leading anti-poverty scholar, Professor Jacobus tenBroek. Examining anti-poverty policy over the forty years since their deaths, Professor Nice criticizes the narrow focus of scholars on social policy, …
No Scrutiny Whatsoever: Deconstitutionalization Of Poverty Law, Dual Rules Of Law, And Dialogic Default, Julie Nice
No Scrutiny Whatsoever: Deconstitutionalization Of Poverty Law, Dual Rules Of Law, And Dialogic Default, Julie Nice
Julie A. Nice
This article traces how the Supreme Court has deconstitutionalized Poverty Law by four departures from normal constitutional doctrine: first, by categorical immunization of “social or economic legislation”; second, by circumvention of normal suspect class or classification analysis; third, by application of rationality review in a reflexive manner to uphold governmental regulation; and fourth, by ratcheting down from the heightened scrutiny normally used for protection of established fundamental rights. In particular, she explores the historical emergence of judicial deference for “social or economic legislation,” and finds that Justice Douglas, who coined the phrase, specifically rejected deference for laws that disadvantaged poor …
Partiality, Julie Nice
Partiality, Julie Nice
Julie A. Nice
This essay is the introduction for a Symposium on Class in LatCrit: Theory and Praxis in a World of Economic Inequality. Professor Nice describes the symposium papers (by Kendal Broad, Lisa Sun-Hee Park, Athena Mutua, and Laura Padilla) as applying various critical tools to examine how scholars study poverty and especially how the construct of “the feminization of poverty” isolates gender while leaving out other experiences of race, immigration status, sexual orientation, parental status, age, ability, and class. While she argues that the feminization of poverty construct itself emerged as a critique of how gender had been ignored in the …
Equal Protection’S Antinomies And The Promise Of A Co-Constitutive Approach, Julie Nice
Equal Protection’S Antinomies And The Promise Of A Co-Constitutive Approach, Julie Nice
Julie A. Nice
This article explores how a central insight of Law and Society scholarship – that law and society are mutually constitutive – explains and informs Equal Protection jurisprudence. Professor Nice describes the state of equal protection discourse as caught in perpetual antinomic debates, with courts typically endorsing the more conservative alternative within such debates, including: (1) adopting assimilation (not anti-subordination) as the goal; (2) treating subordinated persons the same as (not different than) dominant persons; (3) looking backward toward remediation (not forward toward substantive equality); (4) requiring blindness (not consciousness) of the relevant trait; (5) focusing on the classifying trait (not …
The Emerging Third Strand In Equal Protection Jurisprudence: Recognizing The Co-Constitutive Nature Of Rights And Classes, Julie Nice
Julie A. Nice
This article posits the emergence of a third strand in Equal Protection jurisprudence, one that expands conventional two-strand Equal Protection analysis, which applies heightened scrutiny if a right is fundamental or a class is suspect by treating the interaction between rights and classes as mutually constitutive. This development Professor Nice closely examines a prominent trilogy of “outlier” Supreme Court decisions, Romer v. Evans, Plyler v. Doe, and M.L.B. v. S.L.J., and argues these decisions effectively endorsed a co-constitutive understanding to justify the invalidation of governmental discrimination. In each decision, the Court departed from its conventional focus on a fundamental right …
Making Conditions Constitutional By Attaching Them To Welfare: The Dangers Of Selective Contextual Ignorance Of The Unconstitutional Conditions Doctrine, Julie Nice
Julie A. Nice
This article examines the lack of judicial consistency in applying the Unconstitutional Conditions doctrine with regard to the same constitutional guarantee but involving different public benefits. Professor Nice posits that the courts frequently apply a lower level of scrutiny when conditions are attached to welfare benefits than when conditions are attached to other types of government benefits. She specifically examines this inconsistency among decisions involving Free Exercise and Takings. She shows that the Supreme Court has reduced its regular level of heightened scrutiny and instead applied Dandridge-style deference to uphold welfare conditions. For example, in a series of free exercises …
Welfare Servitude, Julie Nice
Welfare Servitude, Julie Nice
Julie A. Nice
In Welfare Servitude, Professor Nice considers whether mandating work as a condition for receiving welfare violates the Thirteenth Amendment’s prohibition of involuntary servitude and also explores the recurring intersection between race and class. She first describes the redoubling of efforts to increase enforcement of welfare work requirements once racial minorities were no longer excluded from receiving welfare benefits. Next she analyzes judicial decisions construing what constitutes involuntary servitude, including historic cases addressing indentured servitude, the padrone system, peonage, and the surety system, as well as modern cases challenging various welfare work requirements. Professor Nice distills three doctrinal types of involuntary …