Law Commons^™

Closing The Health Justice Gap: Access To Justice In Furtherance Of Health Equity, Yael Cannon

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

A massive civil “justice gap” plagues the United States. Every day, low-income Americans—and disproportionately people of color—go without the legal information and representation they need to enforce their rights. This can cost them their homes, jobs, food security, or children. But unmet civil legal needs in housing, employment, and public benefits, for example, are not simply injustices—they are well-documented drivers of poor health, or social determinants of health. Those marginalized by virtue of both race and socioeconomic status are particularly harmed by inaccessibility to justice and also by chronic health conditions and lower life expectancy. When a tenant walks into …

Injustice Is An Underlying Condition, Yael Cannon

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Race, poverty, and zip code serve as critical determinants of a person's health. Research showed the links between these factors and poor health and mortality before COVID-19, and they have only been amplified during this pandemic.

People of color experience higher rates of asthma, heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic conditions. People of color who live in poverty are even more likely to suffer from poor health; they face a “double burden” of health disparities associated with both racial and socioeconomic marginalization. Neighborhoods with concentrated poverty and with residents who are primarily people of color have even faced a life …

Poverty In America: Why Can't We End It?, Peter B. Edelman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The lowest percentage in poverty since we started counting was 11.1 percent in 1973. The rate climbed as high as 15.2 percent in 1983. In 2000, after a spurt of prosperity, it went back down to 11.3 percent, and yet 15 million more people are poor today.

At the same time, we have done a lot that works. From Social Security to food stamps to the earned-income tax credit and on and on, we have enacted programs that now keep 40 million people out of poverty. Poverty would be nearly double what it is now without these measures, according to …

Community Economic Development And The Paradox Of Power, Michael R. Diamond

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article starts from the premise that poverty is a growing problem in the United States. Intergenerational poverty, the entrenchment of a class of very poor people, is a major sub set of that problem and is tied very closely to the issue of race. The author claims that missing in the fight by the poor and their allies against stratified poverty is the creation and utilization of power. This paper examines the disparate ways in which commentators have defined power. It suggests that those seeking to obtain power must understand the concept’s varying meanings and direct their activities to …

De-Concentrating Poverty: De-Constructing A Theory And The Failure Of Hope, Michael R. Diamond

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Since the late 1980s, led by William Julius Wilson’s The Truly Disadvantaged, scholars have been writing about the social problems caused by the concentration in residential communities of high levels of poverty. Even before Wilson’s book, government policy, which previously had resulted in racially and economically segregated communities, had begun to shift towards de-concentration. The consent decree in Hills v Gautreaux, and the HOPE VI and Moving to Opportunity Programs all pointed towards de-concentration of poverty. Commentators have suggested both benign and not-so-benign reasons for the policy shift.

There were a variety of quite hopeful goals promoted by …

Special Education, Poverty, And The Limits Of Private Enforcement, Eloise Pasachoff

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article examines the appropriate balance between public and private enforcement of statutes seeking to distribute resources or social services to a socioeconomically diverse set of beneficiaries through a case study of the federal special education law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). It focuses particularly on the extent to which the Act’s enforcement regime sufficiently enforces the law for the poor. The Article responds to the frequent contention that private enforcement of statutory regimes is necessary to compensate for the shortcomings of public enforcement. Public enforcement, the story goes, is inefficient and relies on underfunded, captured, or impotent …

The Rise And Fall Of The Implied Warranty Of Habitability, David A. Super

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Growing concern about poverty in the late 1960s produced two sweeping legal revolutions. One gave welfare recipients rights against arbitrary eligibility rules and benefit terminations. The other gave low-income tenants recourse when landlords failed to repair their homes. The 1996 welfare law exposed the welfare rights revolution's frailty. Little noticed by legal scholars, the tenants' rights revolution also has failed, and for broadly similar reasons.

Withholding rent deliberately to challenge landlords' failure to repair is unduly risky for most tenants in ill-maintained dwellings: either moving to better housing is a better option or the risk of retaliation is too great. …

Tanf And Low-Income Family Support: Hearing Before The H. Subcomm. On Income Security And Family Support Of The H. Comm. On Ways And Means, 111th Cong., Mar. 11, 2010 (Statement Of Professor Peter B. Edelman, Geo. U. L. Center), Peter B. Edelman

Testimony Before Congress

TANF should be a work-based safety net that strengthens families. The history of the past fourteen years shows the way to improving it for the future. It would be more successful in promoting work if it analyzed the individual needs and challenges of recipients and provided tailored education, training, support services, and other assistance to help people get and keep jobs. It would be more successful as a safety net if benefits were increased and if people in need could succeed in greater numbers in gaining access to the program.

The State Of The American Child: Securing Our Children’S Future: Hearing Before The Subcomm. On Children & Families Of The S. Comm On Health, Educ., Labor & Pensions, 111th Cong., Nov. 18, 2010 (Statement Of Professor Peter B. Edelman, Geo. U. L. Center), Peter B. Edelman

Testimony Before Congress

You have asked me to reflect on the achievements and disappointments of recent decades with regard to child poverty in our country, on lessons learned, and on what we need to do going forward.

It is impossible to understand child poverty trends without placing them in a context of what has happened to the American economy and to the distribution of income and wealth. Except for the last half of the 1990s, the economic history of the past four decades has been one of near‐stagnation for people with jobs that pay below the median wage in the country ‐‐ the …

The Flood: Political Economy And Disaster, Mari J. Matsuda

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

As summer faded to fall in 2005, a hurricane hit New Orleans, a city so unique in its history that it has more history than many American cities. It was nonetheless an American city in these telling parameters: a city of luxury alongside squalor, two-thirds Black, one-fourth poor, with the gap between its rich and poor growing at a gallop as the waters of lake and river lapped gently along aging, grass-covered levees.

Freeze the frame before the waters rise, and what do you see? A devastated public school system, where Black children are labeled “failing,” along with their schools. …

Katrina, The Constitution, And The Legal Question Doctrine, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this paper I will not develop the case for constitutionally protected welfare rights - I have tried to do that elsewhere. Instead, I want to explore the tension between what I will take to be at least a plausible account of the state's Constitutional obligations to the poor, and what seems to me as at least equally self-evident, to wit, that no American court will discover and then impose such Constitutional obligations upon recalcitrant state or federal legislators. My conclusion will be pragmatic. I want to urge those who feel likewise regarding the Constitutional obligations of state actors, to …

Tanf Reauthorization: Is Congress Acting On What We Have Learned?, Peter B. Edelman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

There is only one sure way to make something happen in public policy and in politics, and that is to organize. Sometimes external events-the Great Depression, World War II, Vietnam, Watergate, September 11th, Enron, and MCI WorldCom-will make things happen of their own accord. But we can't wait for events to create opportunity, and many such stimuli are in fact things we don't want to happen. So it is up to us. And the time for organizing is not just when an issue is at the forefront. Organizing is needed to build interest and support on issues over a longer …

Poverty & Welfare: Does Compassionate Conservatism Have A Heart?, Peter B. Edelman

Georgetown Law Faculty Lectures and Appearances

I am honored to deliver a lecture in memory of Edward Sobota, especially because such distinguished speakers have preceded me.

Our question here is: does compassionate conservatism have a heart? Almost five years have passed since the 1996 welfare law was enacted. So, we might ask, where are we and where are we going, and even more to the point, what are the prospects for better policy and outcomes on poverty generally? One American child in six is still poor, and the number of families in economic difficulty is much larger than that. That is the context in which we …

A Conversation On Federalism And The States: The Balancing Act Of Devolution, Peter B. Edelman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

If you consider whether there might be a national definition of benefit levels in welfare, you might well ask whether there is a state-by-state difference in people's needs. There are some regional differences in cost of living, but, otherwise, you eat, you need shelter, and so on. The history of disability policy is very interesting in this regard because from 1935 until 1972 (apart from the addition of social security disability in the 1950s), disability was handled as a welfare category. There were separate welfare programs for the aged, blind, and the disabled, and they were structured the way Aid …

Poverty And Welfare Policy In The Post-Clinton Era, Peter B. Edelman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This is an important time to talk about people in need. There have been major changes recently in public policy toward those in need, and we have seen enough of their effect to be able to discuss the next steps. We have a new President and Congress. A recession is looking more probable by the day. And the 1996 welfare law is coming up for reauthorization in 2002. So this is a good time to look at how we are doing and what we need to do.

Dc Consortium Of Legal Service Providers: Legal Services 2000 Symposium, Peter B. Edelman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

My main point is to urge you to the see what is possible in the way of what I might call a public health approach to lawyering for the poor. In a public health approach you find something that has polluted the river and you clean it up at its source instead of just treating its victims one by one. In legal and societal terms, when we are discussing why so many children are growing up poor and dying a slow death of disappointment, the challenge is to think about it in a public health way. Of course we cannot …