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Full-Text Articles in Law
Econometric Analyses Of U.S. Abortion Policy: A Critical View, Jonathan Klick
Econometric Analyses Of U.S. Abortion Policy: A Critical View, Jonathan Klick
Fordham Urban Law Journal
This article surveys, in non-technical language, various econometric studies on the correlation between changes in access to abortion (whether through legalization, increased public funding, increased safety, etc.) and social phenomena such as sexual activity, crime, and opportunities for women. It argues that many econometrics-based abortion studies are contentious, often yielding varying results depending on the stakes of those commissioning the studies, and often too technical to be useful to policy-makers. As a result of these shortcomings, the author calls for methodological soundness and publication for a more general audience for those social scientists who want to enter the reproductive rights …
Civil Disturbances: Battles For Justice In New York City
Civil Disturbances: Battles For Justice In New York City
Fordham Urban Law Journal
This Collection contains a number of essays that are a part of Civil Disturbances, a collaborative project between artists and lawyers that commemorates various public interest law suits and social justice efforts in New York City. The project itself consists of twenty signs, each representing one specific case, that were designed to be both provoking and informative. This specific Collection contains printings of eight of the signs, as well as separate writings on issues and cases including: disabled people's accessibility to the Empire State Building, child welfare, children's rights, women and the FDNY, rights of the homeless, and welfare benefits. …
Br(E)King The Exploitation Of Labor?: Tensions Regarding The Welfare Workforce, David L. Gregory
Br(E)King The Exploitation Of Labor?: Tensions Regarding The Welfare Workforce, David L. Gregory
Fordham Urban Law Journal
This Article examines the deep human rights concerns within the transmogrifying world of work, focusing on the integral part that work plays in the definition, construction, maintenance, and enhancement of the social contract in the context of the New York City welfare workforce. Part I reviews the "employee"/partner/independent contractor distinctions, focusing on recent case law, the regulatory tax regime, and related issues. Part II examines the complex pressures that workfare legislation will exert throughout most sectors of the workforce and the unemployed. Part III explores the role of Catholic social teachings on workers' rights as well as the reemergence of …
Welfare Reform Within A Changing Context: Redifining The Terms Of The Debate, Mary Brynar Sanger
Welfare Reform Within A Changing Context: Redifining The Terms Of The Debate, Mary Brynar Sanger
Fordham Urban Law Journal
This Essay explains the evolution of various approaches to welfare, assesses the efforts under the Family Support Act and reviews the principal findings of welfare research to evaluate the success of alternative program strategies. It explains the evolution of various approaches toward welfare before the mid-1990s. It then describes reforms instituted 1988 and reviews the dynamics of welfare caseloads and benefits of those programs. This Essay reviews the research findings in welfare reform's critical areas: those that seek to alter benefit structures and eligibility, and those that seek to alter fertility behavior through both incentive and punitive models. The Essay …
The Brown V. Giuliani Injunction: Combating Bureaucratic Disentitlement, Maria Fazzolari
The Brown V. Giuliani Injunction: Combating Bureaucratic Disentitlement, Maria Fazzolari
Fordham Urban Law Journal
This Comment supports the preliminary injunction decision in Brown v. Giuliani, and demonstrates why judicial intervention is appropriate in welfare litigation to protect the constitutional rights of welfare recipients. It describes the New York City welfare administration system and its statutory framework, detailing the bureaucratic problems facing the system. It also describes "bureaucratic disentitlement," whereby largely obscure administrative proceedings function to effectively delay of deny welfare payments to eligible recipients. It examines the traditional judicial remedies and their general impotence in combating bureaucratic disentitlement, and the preliminary injunction decision granted in Brown and the justiciability of separation of powers issues …
Trying To Fit Square Pegs Into Round Holes: The Need For A New Funding Scheme For Kinship Caregivers, Randi Mandelbaum
Trying To Fit Square Pegs Into Round Holes: The Need For A New Funding Scheme For Kinship Caregivers, Randi Mandelbaum
Fordham Urban Law Journal
This article discusses the inadequacy of the current welfare system in meeting the needs of so-called "kinship caregivers." It summarizes the provisions of the two major programs for these individuals - the Aid to Families with Dependent Children fund, and the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act. It explains the difficulty for kinship caregivers under these systems, and outlines a proposed legislative solution whereby individuals in nontraditional family structures could more easily qualify for welfare.
Is There A Doctrine In The House? Welfare Reform And The Unconstitutional Conditions Doctrine, Jonathan Romberg
Is There A Doctrine In The House? Welfare Reform And The Unconstitutional Conditions Doctrine, Jonathan Romberg
Fordham Urban Law Journal
This Article proposes that courts should subject unconstitutional conditions cases to intermediate scrutiny rather than presuming that a conditioned benefit is either valid or invalid based on its formal attributes. In conducting intermediate scrutiny, courts should consider: (i) the degree of equality or neutrality demanded by the underlying constitutional right; (ii) the importance of the benefit to the recipient; (iii) the germaneness of the condition to the reason the government may legitimately deny the benefit in the absence of the condition, and thus whether the government is attempting to use its economic and regulatory powers to gain leverage over a …
Replace Welfare For Contingent Workers With Unemployment Compensation, Stephen Bingham
Replace Welfare For Contingent Workers With Unemployment Compensation, Stephen Bingham
Fordham Urban Law Journal
This essay examines the manner in which the current unemployment insurance system maintains poverty and increases dependence on public assistance programs. It examines the plight of the working poor, the inadequacy of unemployment compensation, and the failure of welfare to compensate for the weaknesses of the unemployment system. It then proposes reforms to the unemployment compensation system, and a new system for employable individuals without ties to the workforce, explaining why this proposal makes sense in light of the current unemployment situation.
Disability And Welfare Reform: Keep The Supplemental Security Income Program But Reengineer The Disability Determination Process, Gay Gellhorn
Fordham Urban Law Journal
The thesis of this Article is that reform of the Supplemental Security Income disability program is properly on the welfare reform agenda, but not in the terms cast by proposed legislation. Procedural reform targeting identified problems should be the first step, rather than the termination of the federal entitlement program or the re-writing of the eligibility criteria. Substantive reform should follow such procedural reform. Therefore, this Article will focus particularly on procedural reform, although it will place that discussion in the context of the current legislative climate. Part II of this Article describes the current disability determination process and why …
The Worst Of Times . . . And The Best Of Times: Lawyering For Poor Clients Today, Louise G. Trubek
The Worst Of Times . . . And The Best Of Times: Lawyering For Poor Clients Today, Louise G. Trubek
Fordham Urban Law Journal
This Essay describes three areas in which advocates have developed new models of practice and new forms of advocacy. It examines ways that lawyers and clients are collaborating to create more effective advocacy for battered women, low-income entrepreneurs and nonprofit community-based organizations that serve the poor. It describes how, why and where the new practices operate and analyzes the roots of the new approaches, showing that they can be traced to changes in lawyering theory and new visions of the lawyer-client relationship. The Essay assesses whether these models can be sustained and generalized, concluding that although the new approaches are …
Protecting Women's Welfare In The Face Of Violence, Martha F. Davis, Susan J. Kraham
Protecting Women's Welfare In The Face Of Violence, Martha F. Davis, Susan J. Kraham
Fordham Urban Law Journal
This article argues that the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program provides a valuable means of continuing support for impoverished women. It points out that such women are at an increased risk of domestic violence, and that they are often unable to escape from abusive relationships because they and their children are economically dependent on their partners. The article criticizes proposed reforms to AFDC from this context, arguing that without the safety net provided by public assistance, many women and children would be trapped by financial constraints in dangerous or life threatening relationships. Thus, an adequate level of public …
Race, Rat Bites And Unfit Mothers: How Media Discourse Informs Welfare Legislation Debate, Lucy A. Williams
Race, Rat Bites And Unfit Mothers: How Media Discourse Informs Welfare Legislation Debate, Lucy A. Williams
Fordham Urban Law Journal
The goal of this article is to expose and critique the media images of poor women that drive legislative debate in AFDC public policy issues. Part II discusses the media image and its centrality in shaping social perceptions of welfare. Part III explores the impact of media images on law-making by focusing on three statutory time periods: 1935, when the AFDC program was initially enacted as part of the Social Security Act; 1967, when the first mandatory work requirements were, added to the AFDC statute; and the present, when states are implementing widely divergent categorical eligibility requirements that restrict AFDC …
The Threat Of The Wandering Poor: Welfare Parochialism And Its Impact On The Use Of Housing Mobility As An Anti-Poverty Strategy, Susan Bennett
The Threat Of The Wandering Poor: Welfare Parochialism And Its Impact On The Use Of Housing Mobility As An Anti-Poverty Strategy, Susan Bennett
Fordham Urban Law Journal
This Essay discusses how, if one accepts the premises of mobility-based anti-poverty strategies, the geographical parochialism and structural rigidity of the welfare system undermine mobility goals. The Essay also examines the possibility that current trends in housing policy will undercut anti-poverty goals.
The Implications Of Current Welfare Reform Proposals For The Housing Assistance System, Sandra J. Newman
The Implications Of Current Welfare Reform Proposals For The Housing Assistance System, Sandra J. Newman
Fordham Urban Law Journal
This Essay assesses proposals to reform welfare from the perspective of effects on housing assistance. The focus is on the two welfare reform proposals that have received the most attention during late 1994 and early 1995: the Clinton Administration's Work and Responsibility Act (WRA and the Republican Party's Personal Responsibility Act (PRA). This analysis is limited to the provisions in each bill regarding time limits, eligibility restrictions, and work requirements for AFDC recipients, and estimates how the housing assistance system would be affected if these provisions were in effect today. This analysis focuses on two types of impacts: effects on …
The Failures Of Litigation As A Tool For The Development Of Social Welfare Policy, Susan V. Demers
The Failures Of Litigation As A Tool For The Development Of Social Welfare Policy, Susan V. Demers
Fordham Urban Law Journal
This article argues that litigation is largely counterproductive to the development of a coherent and feasible social welfare policy and interferes with the constitutionally-derived separation of powers. It describes the proper role of the courts when evaluating government actions and the proper procedures for doing so. It then discusses several cases brought against the New York State Department of Social Services and local governments, arguing that the courts have abandoned their appropriate role, and using these decisions to illustrate its thesis.
Changing Legal Contexts For Affirmative Welfare Reform, Melville D. Miller, Jr.
Changing Legal Contexts For Affirmative Welfare Reform, Melville D. Miller, Jr.
Fordham Urban Law Journal
To test whether the block grant approach currently under consideration in Congress actually achieves the goal of providing states with the flexibility necessary to effect meaningful policy changes, this Essay contrasts the way two different reform proposals would be treated in the current legal and regulatory environment to the way they would likely fare under the proposed legislation. One proposal used in this analysis is a comprehensive welfare reform program, self-described as "progressive," that was developed by a community-based, grass roots coalition in New Jersey. The New Jersey reform proposal aims to improve outcomes for recipients, rather than simply to …
From Welfare To Work In New York City Public Housing, Ruben Franco
From Welfare To Work In New York City Public Housing, Ruben Franco
Fordham Urban Law Journal
This Essay highlights the relationship between welfare and work in New York City's public housing. Part II discusses the composition of the Housing Authority's tenant body in past years as well as the political and social changes affecting the Housing Authority. Part III presents current Housing Authority ideas and programs that address moving tenants from welfare to work. Part IV outlines strategies employed by the Housing Authority to attract more working families, thereby improving the economic mix and social stability of the tenant population. Finally, this Essay concludes that while the Housing Authority cannot, and perhaps should not, address the …
Note: Finger Imaging: A 21st Century Solution To Welfare Fraud At Our Fingertips, James J. Killerlane Iii
Note: Finger Imaging: A 21st Century Solution To Welfare Fraud At Our Fingertips, James J. Killerlane Iii
Fordham Urban Law Journal
This Note describes the finger imaging process and summarizes the current New York Social Services law regarding public assistance. It also outlines the current finger imaging bill before the New York State Legislature. Part III examines and considers the two major policy arguments against the implementation of the program. Part IV outlines the legal controversy regarding finger imaging and addresses each express concern as well as constitutional issues. Part V compares New York's finger imaging legislation with similar legislation already in place in California and argues that the New York program will be as effective as California's. In conclusion, this …
Welfare Law-Afdc-Agency-Caused Overpayments May Be Recouped By Reducing Grants Of Recipients Who Have "Disregarded" Income Available To Meet Their Standard Of Need, Keith E. Danish
Fordham Urban Law Journal
The Agency attempted to recoup the overpayments of a woman and her nine dependent children by reducing the family's AFDC grant, in accordance with a state regulation which authorized such recoupment where the welfare recipient had current income available in excess of the AFDC grant. The Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York held that the challenged recoupment policy did not violate the Social Security Act. The current heightened awareness that there are limits to state resources has resulted in the tightening and curtailment of welfare programs. Welfare agencies must make greater efforts to decrease errors which …
Note: The Eligibility Of The Unborn Child Under Afdc, John K. Enright
Note: The Eligibility Of The Unborn Child Under Afdc, John K. Enright
Fordham Urban Law Journal
This Note surveys recent litigation challenging the state denial of AFDC payments to pregnant women seeking benefit on behalf of their unborn children. Such decisions have focused on the issue of whether unborn children come within the definition of "dependent child" as set forth in Section 606 of the AFDC. Thus far, fourteen of seventeen reported decisions have included unborn children within the statutory definition. The Note concludes that the unborn child cases illustrate the difficulty of the rule that the Supreme Court laid out in Townsend v. Swank, which held that states must make AFDC payments to all eligible …