Law Commons^™

The Rule Of Law And The Two Realms Of Welfare Administration, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Although it was not the first case in which the Supreme Court upheld a welfare claim, Goldberg v. Kelly is often thought of as the case that extended the rule of law to the welfare system. In doing so, it repudiated the "right/privilege" distinction that would confine procedural protections of economic interests to private law claims.

But Goldberg did not challenge basic assumptions about the nature of procedural fairness that the legal culture had developed principally in connection with private law claims. Its conception of fairness focused on claims initiated by individuals for relief for themselves, and on an adjudicatory …