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Full-Text Articles in Inequality and Stratification
Empowering The Poor: Turning De Facto Rights Into Collateralized Credit, Steven L. Schwarcz
Empowering The Poor: Turning De Facto Rights Into Collateralized Credit, Steven L. Schwarcz
Faculty Scholarship
The shrinking middle class and the widening gap between the rich and the poor constitute significant threats to social and financial stability. One of the main impediments to upward mobility is the inability of economically disadvantaged people to use their property — in which they sometimes hold only de facto, not de jure, rights — as collateral to obtain credit. This Article argues that commercial law should recognize those de facto rights, enabling the poor to borrow to start businesses or otherwise create wealth. Recognition not only would provide benefits that exceed its costs; it also would be consistent with, …
A Theory Of Poverty: Legal Immobility, Sara Sternberg Greene
A Theory Of Poverty: Legal Immobility, Sara Sternberg Greene
Faculty Scholarship
The puzzle of why the cycle of poverty persists and upward class mobility is so difficult for the poor has long captivated scholars and the public alike. Yet with all of the attention that has been paid to poverty, the crucial role of the law, particularly state and local law, in perpetuating poverty is largely ignored. This Article offers a new theory of poverty, one that introduces the concept of legal immobility. Legal immobility considers the cumulative effects of state and local laws as a mechanism through which poverty is perpetuated and upward mobility is stunted. The Article provides an …