Social Welfare Law Commons^™

Book Review, Chad J. Schatzle

Scholarly Works

Welfare's Forgotten Past: A Socio-Legal History of the Poor Law is a timely reminder of society's legal duty to the poor. In an era of global economic turmoil, with recent welfare reform and heated debates over the extension of unemployment benefits here in the United States, it is easy to forget that laws for the relief of poverty have roots reaching back more than 400 years. Author Lorie Charlesworth, Reader in Law and History at Liverpool John Moores University, focuses her book on the poor law-a historical, English system derived largely from the seventeenth-century laws of settlement and removal, which …

Rethinking Guardianship (Again): Substituted Decision Making As A Violation Of The Integration Mandated Of Title Ii Of The Americans With Disabilities Act, Leslie Salzman

Articles

In every state, when an adult has a diminished capacity to make decisions about personal affairs or property management, a court may transfer the individual’s right to make decisions to a guardian. This Article argues that, in most cases, it would be preferable to support decision making rather than supplant it through guardianship, and then seeks to locate a right to receive such support as a less restrictive alternative to the substituted decision making that characterizes guardianship.

Building on the reasoning in Olmstead v. L.C. and subsequent decisions interpreting the Americans with Disabilities Act’s integration mandate, this Article argues that …

Social Welfare And Fairness In Juvenile Crime Regulation, Elizabeth S. Scott, Laurence Steinberg

Faculty Scholarship

The question of how lawmakers should respond to developmental differences between adolescents and adults in formulating juvenile crime policy has been the subject of debate for a generation. A theme of the punitive law reforms that dismantled the traditional juvenile justice system in the 1980s and 1990s was that adolescents were not different from adults in any way that was relevant to criminal punishment – or at least that any differences were trumped by the demands of public safety. But this view has been challenged in recent years; scholars and courts have recognized that adolescents, due to their developmental immaturity, …

Finding And Incorporating Spirituality In The Work Of The Clinic, Ana M. Novoa

Faculty Articles

forthcoming

Between Starvation And Globalization: Realizing The Right To Food In India, Lauren Birchfield, Jessica Corsi

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article evaluates People's Union for Civil Liberties v. Union of India & Others (PUCL) through multiple lenses, examining: (1) the necessary factors that contributed to the success of the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) and its enforcement and (2) both the implications and limitations of PUCL as it relates to India's larger economic policy framework. We argue that the development and success of the PUCL litigation have depended in part on provisions of the Indian Constitution amenable to the incorporation and promotion of economic and social rights as well as on a unique relationship between civil society and judicial institutions. …

Social Security Benefits Formula 101: A Practical Primer, Francine J. Lipman

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Oil And Water: Mixing Individual Mandates, Fragmented Markets, And Health Reform, Allison K. Hoffman

All Faculty Scholarship

With momentum toward national health reform, there is wide support for legislation to include an individual mandate that would require all Americans to carry health insurance. Discussion of the individual mandate has relied largely on whether the mandate will generate universal coverage as a gauge for success. This article challenges the notion that an individual mandate is successful if it leads to universal coverage, revealing a critical problem the individual mandate will face even if all Americans were to have health insurance. To uncover this problem, this article sets out a novel framework that disentangles the three different policy objectives …

Contingent Valuation Studies And Health Policy, Matthew D. Adler

All Faculty Scholarship

This short comment argues that both cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) should be seen as imperfect tools for evaluating health policy. This is true, not only for extra-welfarists, but even for welfarists, since both CBA and CEA can deviate from the use of social welfare functions (SWF). A simple model is provided to illustrate the divergence between CBA, CEA, and the SWF approach. With this insight in mind, the comment considers the appropriate role of contingent-valuation studies. For full text, please see: http://www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/madler/workingpapers/578A59B6d01.pdf.

Guest Editor's Introduction, Special Issue: Ensuring Access To Justice For Self-Represented, Amy Applegate

Articles by Maurer Faculty

I am pleased to be the guest editor of his special issue of Family Court Review, which focuses on "Access to Justice for Self-Represented Litigants." I am even more pleased that this issue includes articles written by some of the leaders of Indiana's pro bono legal community; several outstanding students; my collaborators who conduct research about the effect of self-representation in the mediation context, especially where there is intimate partner violence or abuse (IPVA); and colleagues in the national clinical and law school pro bono community whose students provide pro bono services to disadvantaged or marginalized individuals with family …

The Politics Of Supplementing Failure Under No Child Left Behind: How Both Left And Right Are Forcing Low-Income Children To Choose Between A Deficient Education And Working Overtime, Monica Teixeira De Sousa

Nevada Law Journal

This Article analyzes NCLB's Supplemental Educational Services provision and exposes its shortcomings. Part I introduces the voluntary overtime work approach of SES and highlights its flaws and limitations. Research reveals that the voluntary overtime work model is designed for the exceptional student and does not provide meaningful opportunities to the majority of students in under-performing schools. Part II presents the legal and political context in which policymakers created SES and shows how they failed to assess realistically the many challenges facing students today. In particular, the legislative history reveals that ideology--a blend of free-market and “pull yourself up by your …

The Case For Social Rights, Virginia Mantouvalou

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This is part of the book Debating Social Rights (Oxford, Hart Publishing, 2010) where I am making the case for social rights and Professor Conor Gearty (LSE) is making the case against social rights. This paper argues that social and economic rights, defined as rights to the satisfaction of basic needs, are constitutional essentials at domestic level and claims of the highest priority at supranational level. Their inadequate legal protection in national and supranational orders is not justified. Social rights have common foundations with civil and political rights, but have been neglected in law because of Cold War ideologies. The …

Drug Law Reform—Retreating From An Incarceration Addiction, Robert G. Lawson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Now, thirty years into the "war on drugs," views about the law's reliance on punishment to fix the drug problem are less conciliatory and more absolute: "[t]he notion that 'the drug war is a failure' has become the common wisdom in academic ... circles." Those who have most closely studied the results of the "war" believe that it has "accomplished little more than incarcerating hundreds of thousands of individuals whose only crime was the possession of drugs." More importantly, they believe that it has had little if any effect on the drug problem: "Despite the fact that the number of …

Family-Related Issues In Social And Welfare Law. Legal Methods For Research On Children And Families, Titti Mattsson

Titti Mattsson

No abstract provided.

Just Contracts And Catholic Social Teaching: A Perspective From American Law, Vincent Rougeau

Vincent D. Rougeau

No abstract provided.

Fundamental Social Rights, Social Security And The Costs Of Social Rights: Brazilian Cases, Carlos Luiz Strapazzon

Carlos Luiz Strapazzon

Brazilian Courts, in order to guarantee social rights, should take into account the scarcity of resources and the principle of equality so as not favoring anyone with features that are intended for everyone. Given this limitation, how the Judicial Power might act with respect to the realization of social rights? It has down increased attention how, in Brazil, the Judicial Power, especially the Supreme Court and the Superior Court, have interfered in Executive discretion so as to protect social rights, as health rights or educational rights. This article aims to explain how it occurs in Brazil and verify, on the …

Das Virtudes Cívicas Clássicas Às Virtudes Pós-Modernas - Dos Tempos E Dos Modos, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Ao mesmo tempo que importa recuperar, na nossa memória e na educação, os grandes exemplos dos virtuosos heróis e sábios da Antiguidade Clássica, que a deseducação tem olvidado, não se pode esquecer que o mundo pós-moderno em que vivemos requer de nós aptidões, virtualidades, posicionamentos diferentes. Não para caminharmos no sentido de todos os demais, mas para respondermos com valor aos reptos do presente. Este artigo procura conciliar, pois, o legado clássico das virtudes cívicas, com algumas propostas inspiradas em autores recentes (como Italo Calvino e Alain Finkielkraut) para o séc. XXI

Direito, Utopia E Insularidade, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Não é por acaso que tantas utopias literárias se localizam ficcionalmente em ilhas. Não é por acaso que as utopias são uma espécie de descrição constitucional sem as amarras dos artigos de um código de direito político. Não é por acaso que as ilhas, parecendo uma prisão, rodeada de mar por todos os lados, são afinal sonhos de onde se pode sair, voando. Não só em sonhos oníricos, mas em sonhos que se podem tornar realidade. Este artigo desenvolve as ligações entre os aspectos literários, políticos e jurídicos das utopias na sua dimensão insular.

Virtude Da Constituição E Virtudes Republicanas, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

A virtude da Constituição é a sua essência e função. E a Constituição tem sempre uma virtude liberal-democrática, apesar de tudo. Conra tudo e contra todos, apesar por vezes mesmo de si própria e das intenções dos seus autores... Depois do “retorno” dos valores à política e ao Direito Constitucional, é a vez da volta das virtudes à discussão, designadamente pela via da ética constitucional ou republicana, de novo na ordem do dia em muitos países. Quais serão, então, as principais virtudes juspolíticas, constitucionais, ou republicanas? O presente artigo intenta também uma proposta de virtudes republicanas concretas para o nosso …

Instituições, Trabalho E Pessoas, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Os especialistas em doenças terminais sabem que ninguém tem saudades, quando abandona a vida, do trabalho que não fez. Tem saudades sim do tempo que não passou com familiares e amigos. A sociedade contemporânea, e algumas instituições "totais" estão a potenciar até ao expoente demencial a exploração e a despersonalização dos trabalhadores, designadamente proletarizando técnicos superiores e técnicos pensantes que, sem ócio criativo, deixarão de criar. É uma crise civilizacional, nada menos.

Benefit Overpayments, The Common Law And Human Rights, Mel Cousins

Mel Cousins

This article examines the issue of benefits overpayments in UK social security law. Current estimates put the level of overpayments due to error (as opposed to fraud) at about £2 billion per annum. Concern about his issue has led to the publication of a DWP statement of strategy and an attempt by DWP to use the common law to recover overpaid benefits. The article looks at a number of recent court decisions which have important implications for UK practice.