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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
Welfare And Rights Before The Movement: Rights As A Language Of The State, Karen M. Tani
Welfare And Rights Before The Movement: Rights As A Language Of The State, Karen M. Tani
All Faculty Scholarship
In conversations about government assistance, rights language often emerges as a danger: when benefits become “rights,” policymakers lose flexibility, taxpayers suffer, and the poor lose their incentive to work. Absent from the discussion is an understanding of how, when, and why Americans began to talk about public benefits in rights terms. This Article addresses that lacuna by examining the rise of a vibrant language of rights within the federal social welfare bureaucracy during the 1930s and 1940s. This language is barely visible in judicial and legislative records, the traditional source base for legal-historical inquiry, but amply evidenced by previously unmined …
Federalism As A Safeguard Of The Separation Of Powers, Jessica Bulman-Pozen
Federalism As A Safeguard Of The Separation Of Powers, Jessica Bulman-Pozen
Faculty Scholarship
States frequently administer federal law, yet scholars have largely overlooked how the practice of cooperative federalism affects the balance of power across the branches of the federal government. This Article explains how states check the federal executive in an era of expansive executive power and how they do so as champions of Congress, both relying on congressionally conferred authority and casting themselves as Congress's faithful agents. By inviting the states to carry out federal law, Congress, whether purposefully or incidentally, counteracts the tendency of statutory ambiguity and broad delegations of authority to enhance federal executive power. When states disagree with …