Social Welfare Law Commons^™

Cleaning The Muck Of Ages From The Windows Into The Soul Of Income Tax, John Passant

John Passant

The aim of this paper is to provide readers with an insight into Marx’s methods as a first step to understanding income tax more generally but with specific reference to Australia’s income tax system. I do this by introducing readers to the ideas about the totality that is capitalism, appearance and form, and the dialectic in Marx’s hands. This will involve looking at income tax as part of the bigger picture of capitalism, and understanding that all things are related and changes in one produce changes in all. Appearances can be deceptive and we need to delve below the surface …

Minding The Gaps: Fairness, Welfare, And The Constitutive Structure Of Distributive Assessment, Robert C. Hockett

Robert C. Hockett

Despite over a century’s disputation and attendant opportunity for clarification, the field of inquiry now loosely labeled “welfare economics” (WE) remains surprisingly prone to foundational confusions. The same holds of work done by many practitioners of WE’s influential offshoot, normative “law and economics” (LE). A conspicuous contemporary case of confusion turns up in recent discussion concerning “fairness versus welfare.” The very naming of this putative dispute signals a crude category error. “Welfare” denotes a proposed object of distribution. “Fairness” describes and appropriate pattern of distribution. Welfare itself is distributed fairly or unfairly. “Fairness versus welfare” is analytically on all fours …

Preventative Legislation Ensures Intended Parents Of Gestational Surrogacy Benefits Under The California Family Rights Act, Jennifer Jackson

Jennifer Jackson

We live in a rapidly evolving technological age, which now allows parents to enter surrogacy contracts. In such a world, the law often lags in catching up to technology and the ramifications that may ensue. This paper focuses on the California Family Rights Act (CFRA) and the consequences it has on surrogacy agreements and the rights intended parents. While the CFRA includes broad language as to the definition of a “child,” case law shows that surrogate born children may be unintentionally excluded. As a result, this paper analyzes the arguments both for and against revision to the CFRA and concludes …

Preventing Balkanization Or Facilitating Racial Domination: A Critique Of The New Equal Protection, Darren L. Hutchinson

Darren L Hutchinson

Abstract

Preventing Balkanization or Facilitating Racial Domination: A Critique of the

New Equal Protection

The Supreme Court requires that equal protection plaintiffs prove defendants acted with discriminatory intent. The intent rule has insulated from judicial invalidation numerous policies that harmfully impact racial and ethnic minorities. Court doctrine also mandates that state actors remain colorblind. The colorblindness doctrine has caused the Court to invalidate many policies that were designed to ameliorate the conditions of racial inequality. Taken together, these two equality doctrines facilitate racial domination. The Court justifies this outcome on the ground that the Constitution does not protect “group rights.” …

Tell Us A Story, But Don't Make It A Good One: Resolving The Confusion Regarding Emotional Stories And Federal Rule Of Evidence 403, Cathren Page

Cathren Page

Abstract: Tell Us a Story, But Don’t Make It A Good One: Resolving the Confusion Regarding Emotional Stories and Federal Rule of Evidence 403 by Cathren Koehlert-Page Courts need to reword their opinions regarding Rule 403 to address the tension between the advice to tell an emotionally evocative story at trial and the notion that evidence can be excluded if it is too emotional. In the murder mystery Mystic River, Dave Boyle is kidnapped in the beginning. The audience feels empathy for Dave who as an adult becomes one of the main suspects in the murder of his friend Jimmy’s …

Unfulfilled Promise: Mental Disability Voting Rights And The Halving Of Hava’S Potential, Benjamin Hoerner

Benjamin O Hoerner

In 2012, the heated presidential election between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney reanimated the debate surrounding the voting rights of mentally disabled citizens in the United States. A decade earlier, in October 2002, President George W. Bush signed into law the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), aiming to protect the voting rights of the country’s disabled population. At the time of its enactment, legislators and commentators lauded HAVA as “the most important voting rights bill since the passing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.” However, since its passage, HAVA has been subjected to a flurry of …

Licensure Of Health Care Professionals: The Consumer's Case For Abolition, Charles H. Baron

Charles H. Baron

While state medical licensure laws ostensibly are intended to promote worthwhile goals, such as the maintenance of high standards in health care delivery, this Article argues that these laws in practice are detrimental to consumers. The Article takes the position that licensure contributes to high medical care costs and stifles competition, innovation and consumer autonomy. It concludes that delicensure would expand the range of health services available to consumers and reduce patient dependency, and that these developments would tend to make medical practice more satisfying to consumers and providers of health care services.