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Selected Works

Poverty

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Law and Society

Against The ‘Safety Net’, Matthew Lawrence Feb 2020

Against The ‘Safety Net’, Matthew Lawrence

Matthew B. Lawrence

Jack Kemp and Ronald Reagan originated the ‘safety net’ conception of United States health and welfare laws in the late 1970s and early 1980s, defending proposed cuts to New Deal and Great Society programs by asserting that such cuts would not take away the “social safety net of programs” for those with “true need.” Legal scholars have adopted their metaphor widely and uncritically. This Essay deconstructs the ‘safety net’ metaphor and counsels against its use in understanding health and welfare laws. The metaphor is descriptively confusing because it means different things to different audiences. Some understand the ‘safety net’ as …

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Poverty, The Great Unequalizer: Improving The Delivery System For Civil Legal Aid, Latonia Haney Keith Jan 2018

Poverty, The Great Unequalizer: Improving The Delivery System For Civil Legal Aid, Latonia Haney Keith

Latonia Haney Keith

Civil justice issues in the United States bring with them no guarantee of legal counsel, yet the civil legal system is still designed to require an attorney in almost all situations. Given the ever-growing costs of legal representation, how then are the legal needs of the poor met? The author calls this phenomenon the “justice gap” and addresses the issue of an access to justice gap and proposes a potential solution.

This article examines the existence of the “justice gap,” wherein the poor face substantial barriers that hinder them from receiving the same legal protections as wealthier Americans. It goes …

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Who's Afraid Of White Class Migrants? On Denial, Discrediting, And Disdain (And Toward A Richer Conception Of Diversity), Lisa R. Pruitt Dec 2014

Who's Afraid Of White Class Migrants? On Denial, Discrediting, And Disdain (And Toward A Richer Conception Of Diversity), Lisa R. Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

This Article describes and theorizes the legal academy’s denial of both class disadvantage and class migration, with particular attention to how those phenomena are manifest in relation to white faculty. The Article observes that a general disdain for poor and working-class whites evolves into the denial and distancing of class migrants, those who move into the professoriate from lower socioeconomic stations (“SES”). Further, the academy simultaneously discredits and disciplines these class migrants when they run afoul of narrow norms regarding credentials, scholarship, and culture. The author employs storytelling as methodology, drawing on her own experiences as a white class migrant …

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The False Choice Between Race And Class And Other Affirmative Action Myths, Lisa R. Pruitt Dec 2014

The False Choice Between Race And Class And Other Affirmative Action Myths, Lisa R. Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

This article refutes the widely held assumption that affirmative action is appropriate either to support only racial and ethnic minorities or to support only low-income students, but that it cannot or should not support both. Pruitt argues that we need not make such a choice and that we should aspire to socioeconomically diversify higher education institutions—including the most elite sector—with low-income students of all colors. Pruitt thus disputes the framing of Richard Kahlenberg and Richard Sander who have long argued that we should seek socioeconomic diversity in lieu of racial/ethnic diversity, a stance that has needlessly pitted underrepresented minorities against …

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