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How The State And Federal Tax Systems Operate To Deny Educational Opportunities To Minorities And Other Lower Income Students, Camilla E. Watson Jan 2021

How The State And Federal Tax Systems Operate To Deny Educational Opportunities To Minorities And Other Lower Income Students, Camilla E. Watson

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The importance of education cannot be overstated. Education is a core principle of the American Dream, and as such, it is the ticket to a better paying job, homeownership, financial security, and a better way of life. Education is the key factor in reducing poverty and inequality and promoting sustained national economic growth. But while the U.S. Supreme Court has referred to education as "perhaps the most important function of the state and local governments," it has nevertheless stopped short of declaring education a fundamental right guaranteed under the Constitution. As a consequence, because education is not considered a fundamental …


The Biology Of Inequality, Lucille Jewel Jan 2018

The Biology Of Inequality, Lucille Jewel

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We have known for quite some time that disadvantaged individuals suffer from poorer health outcomes and lower life spans than the advantaged. The disadvantaged do not perform as well on educational tests than their wealthier peers. In some situations, racial discrimination intersects with poverty to worsen these outcomes for minorities. With the notion that poverty becomes implanted in an individual’s genes and brain, science helps explain how these disparate lifespans and variations in cognitive outcomes come to be. This Article collectively refers to these scientific theories as embodied inequality. Embodied inequality explains why it is so difficult for individuals to …


(Anti)Poverty Measures Exposed, Francine J. Lipman Jan 2017

(Anti)Poverty Measures Exposed, Francine J. Lipman

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Few economic indicators have more salience and pervasive financial impact on everyday lives in the United States than poverty measures. Nevertheless, policymakers, researchers, advocates, and legislators generally do not understand the details of poverty measure mechanics. These detailed mechanics shape and reshape poverty measures and the too often uninformed responses and remedies. This Article will build a bridge from personal portraits of families living in poverty to the resource allocations that failed them by exposing the specific detailed mechanics underlying the Census Bureau’s official (OPM) and supplemental poverty measures (SPM). Too often, when we confront the problem of poverty, the …


Flourishing Rights, Wendy A. Bach Nov 2014

Flourishing Rights, Wendy A. Bach

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Flourishing Rights reviews Clare Huntington’s Failure to Flourish: How Law Undermines Family Relationships, recently published by the Oxford University Press. This review explores the way that specific issues at the heart of the relationship between poor families and the state affects Huntington’s thesis and proposals. The review largely applauds the book but concludes that a robust form of rights protection, when combined with the impressive policy arguments Huntington marshals, might actually make real the audacious idea that everyone has a right to flourish.


Heal The Suffering Children: Fifty Years After The Declaration Of War On Poverty, Francine J. Lipman, Dawn Davis Jan 2014

Heal The Suffering Children: Fifty Years After The Declaration Of War On Poverty, Francine J. Lipman, Dawn Davis

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Fifty years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared the War on Poverty. Since then, the federal tax code has been a fundamental tool in providing financial assistance to poor working families. Even today, however, thirty-two million children live in families that cannot support basic living expenses, and sixteen million of those live in extreme poverty. This Article navigates the confusing requirements of an array of child-related tax benefits including the dependency exemption deduction, head of household filing status, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Child Tax Credit. Specifically, this Article explores how altering the definition of a qualifying child …


The Hyperregulatory State: Women, Race, Poverty And Support, Wendy A. Bach Jan 2014

The Hyperregulatory State: Women, Race, Poverty And Support, Wendy A. Bach

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Vulnerability and dependency theory offers a rich and promising vision for those who seek to conceptualize and build a more responsive state. In theorizing a road to a supportive state, however, what would it mean to take up the challenge of intersectionality? What would it mean to center the analysis around key aspects of the relationship between legal institutions and the poor, disproportionately women and families of color who have no choice but to avail themselves of what remains of a shredded social safety net? The Hyperregulatory State argues that, for women who have no choice but to avail themselves …


Access To Tax Injustice, Francine J. Lipman Jan 2013

Access To Tax Injustice, Francine J. Lipman

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No abstract provided.


How The Poor Got Cut Out Of Banking, Mehrsa Baradaran Jan 2013

How The Poor Got Cut Out Of Banking, Mehrsa Baradaran

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The United States currently has two banking systems — one for the rich, one for the poor. It wasn’t always this way. Throughout U.S. history, the government has enlisted certain banking institutions to serve the needs of the poor and offer low cost credit to enable low-income Americans to escape poverty. Credit unions, savings and loans and Morris Banks are three prominent examples of government-supported institutions with a specific focus of helping the poor. Unfortunately, these institutions are no longer fulfilling their missions and high-cost, usurious, and sometimes predatory check-cashers and payday lenders have quickly filled the void. These fringe …


Mobilization And Poverty Law: Searching For Participatory Democracy Amongst The Ashes Of The War On Poverty, Wendy A. Bach Mar 2012

Mobilization And Poverty Law: Searching For Participatory Democracy Amongst The Ashes Of The War On Poverty, Wendy A. Bach

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In 1964, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, the federal government launched Community Action, a program that was to be designed and implemented with the maximum feasible participation of the poor. Today in governance theory, we are told once again that participation by affected communities in the mechanisms of governance have the ability to deepen democracy – to yield better policy and to engage new voices in the mechanisms of democracy. Mobilization and Poverty Law: Searching for Participatory Democracy Amongst the Ashes of The War on Poverty turns to history to explore a question central to both governance …


Narrative Preferences And Administrative Due Process, Jason A. Cade Apr 2011

Narrative Preferences And Administrative Due Process, Jason A. Cade

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This Article illustrates, through sociolinguistic analysis, how an adjudicator’s biases against certain narrative styles can influence his or her assessments of credibility, treatment of parties, and decision-making in the administrative law setting. Poverty lawyers have long observed that many claimants in the administrative state continue to face procedural and discursive obstacles. Applying insights from a growing field of inter-disciplinary research, including conversation analysis, linguistics, and cognitive studies, this Article builds upon those observations by more precisely exploring through a case study of an unemployment insurance benefits hearing how structural and narrative biases can work to deny an applicant due process …


Saving Private Ryan's Tax Refund: Poverty Relief For All Working Poor Military Families, Francine J. Lipman Jan 2010

Saving Private Ryan's Tax Refund: Poverty Relief For All Working Poor Military Families, Francine J. Lipman

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No abstract provided.


Governance, Accountability And The New Poverty Agenda, Wendy A. Bach Jan 2010

Governance, Accountability And The New Poverty Agenda, Wendy A. Bach

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Across the country a new poverty agenda is emerging. These efforts are limited by the political consensus that has emerged since welfare reform and focus, as has always been the case, on the “deserving” - in today’s iteration, primarily the working poor. Mirroring national and international trends, the means of governance of these new social welfare programs has also begun to change. Where once there was a set of programs ostensibly controlled through law and regulations, in growing pockets there is now radical devolution and abandonment of traditional legal and rule making structures. Experiments in policy, program structure, and governance …


Saving Private Ryan's Tax Refund, Francine J. Lipman Jan 2009

Saving Private Ryan's Tax Refund, Francine J. Lipman

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No abstract provided.


The Course Of True Human Rights Progress Never Did Run Smooth, Diane Marie Amann Jul 2008

The Course Of True Human Rights Progress Never Did Run Smooth, Diane Marie Amann

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As the United States moves toward the inauguration in January 2009 of a new President, greater attention is paid to what the country might do to restore and reinforce its traditional role as a leader in the promotion of human rights. This essay warns against any assumption that innovation alone will assure greater enforcement of rights; its points of reference are not only the current administration, but also one long past, that of President John F. Kennedy. Rather than jump to embrace new, global concepts like responsibility to protect, therefore, it argues for careful pursuit of local change. It then …


Welfare Reform, Privatization And Power: Reconfiguring Administrative Law Structures From The Ground Up, Wendy A. Bach Jan 2008

Welfare Reform, Privatization And Power: Reconfiguring Administrative Law Structures From The Ground Up, Wendy A. Bach

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Since welfare reform in 1996, privatization has led to a radical reconfiguration in the dominant mode of governance in public benefits programs. The United States has largely moved from systems controlled through law and regulation to systems controlled through contracts. With this shift has come a significant diminishment in public accountability in general and, more specifically, a diminishment in the ability of poor communities and their advocates to intervene in the making of welfare policy. At the same time, privatization has proven to be an extraordinarily effective mechanism for imposing highly punitive welfare programs on poor communities. Building upon the …


Community Economic Development Under Protest, Ngai Pindell Jan 2005

Community Economic Development Under Protest, Ngai Pindell

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Storming Caesars Palace casts the War on Poverty in a new light to illustrate the "rich potential of a poor women's movement for economic justice." Orleck challenges "scholars and policymakers [to] rethink the conventional wisdom that the War on Poverty was a failure." Through "seeing and hearing from welfare mothers in all their complex, contradictory humanity," she hopes to unsettle existing ideas of effective anti-poverty strategies. Orleck is understandably troubled by the glacial pace of progress in the lives of poor people in America, concluding that "after a cacophonous, half-century debate about America's so-called underclass, few creative or genuinely new …


Enabling Work For People With Disabilities: A Post-Integrationist Revision Of Underutilized Tax Incentives, Francine J. Lipman Jan 2003

Enabling Work For People With Disabilities: A Post-Integrationist Revision Of Underutilized Tax Incentives, Francine J. Lipman

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No abstract provided.


The Working Poor Are Paying For Government Benefits: Fixing The Hole In The Anti-Poverty Purse, Francine J. Lipman Jan 2003

The Working Poor Are Paying For Government Benefits: Fixing The Hole In The Anti-Poverty Purse, Francine J. Lipman

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No abstract provided.


Introduction To Symposium, The Rights Of Parents With Children In Foster Care: Removals Arising From Economic Hardship And The Predicative Power Of Race, Ann Cammett Jan 2003

Introduction To Symposium, The Rights Of Parents With Children In Foster Care: Removals Arising From Economic Hardship And The Predicative Power Of Race, Ann Cammett

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Professor Cammett introduces a symposium at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York exploring the predicament posed by the surge of child removals through neglect petitions, and the subsequent placement of those children in foster care. The panel’s published comments offer some poignant reflections on the crisis of the child welfare system.