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Full-Text Articles in Social Welfare Law
The Poverty Law Education Of Charles Reich, Felicia Kornbluh, Karen Tani
The Poverty Law Education Of Charles Reich, Felicia Kornbluh, Karen Tani
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This essay, written for a symposium on the life and legacy of Charles Reich, explores how Reich came to be interested in the field of poverty law and, specifically, the constitutional rights of welfare recipients. The essay emphasizes the influence of two older women in Reich’s life: Justine Wise Polier, the famous New York City family court judge and the mother of one of Reich’s childhood friends, and Elizabeth Wickenden, a contemporary of Polier’s who was a prominent voice in social welfare policymaking and a confidante of high-level federal social welfare administrators. Together, Polier and Wickenden helped educate Reich about …
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
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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 …