Disability Law Commons^™

Social Security Disability Insurance And Supplemental Security Income, Jennifer L. Erkulwater

Political Science Faculty Publications

Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) are the foundation of the social safety net for Americans with disabilities. Both provide cash benefits, and because neither program is limited to specific impairments or to workers in particular occupations, as is the case with many public and private disability plans, they are broadly accessible to the American people and the most expensive of the nation's disability benefit programs. Excluding expenditures for health care, DI and SSI combined account for almost three-quarters of annual federal spending on the disabled (U.S. GAO 1999).

Disability benefits policy, though, has long been …

The Judicial Transformation Of Social Security Disability: The Case Of Mental Disorders And Childhood Disability, Jennifer L. Erkulwater

Political Science Faculty Publications

A full account of the judicial influence on Social Security disability programs would require a book-length, perhaps even encyclopedia-length, treatise and would take us far afield from our present concern. This article focuses narrowly on the activities of Legal Services attorneys, mental health reformers, and children's advocates. Although mental health reformer groups are only one of many antipoverty organizations involved in advocacy efforts on behalf of the disabled poor, they have been among the most persistent, the most active, and the most successful in using a litigation strategy to achieve their larger policy goals. According to one Social Security official, …