Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Publication
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 11 of 11
Full-Text Articles in Law
Targeting Poverty In The Courts: Improving The Measurement Of Ability To Pay, Meghan M. O'Neil, Jj Prescott
Targeting Poverty In The Courts: Improving The Measurement Of Ability To Pay, Meghan M. O'Neil, Jj Prescott
Law & Economics Working Papers
Ability-to-pay determinations are essential when governments use money-based alternative sanctions, like fines, to enforce laws. One longstanding difficulty in the U.S. has been the extreme lack of guidance on how courts are to determine a litigant’s ability to pay. The result has been a seat-of-the-pants approach that is inefficient and inaccurate, and, as a consequence, very socially costly. Fortunately, online platform technology presents a promising avenue for reform. In particular, platform technology offers the potential to increase litigant access, reduce costs, and ensure consistent and fair treatment—all of which should lead to more accurate sanctions. We use interviews, surveys, and …
Foreword: Innocent Until Proven Poor, Sara Zampierin
Foreword: Innocent Until Proven Poor, Sara Zampierin
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
One of the core tenets of our criminal justice system is the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. As the title of the Symposium recognizes, we have allowed our justice system to ignore that presumption for people living in poverty in a variety of ways. Instead, it often inflicts additional and harsher punishment on individuals because of their poverty.
Keynote Remarks, Vanita Gupta
Keynote Remarks, Vanita Gupta
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
In communities across America today, from Ferguson, Missouri, to Flint, Michigan, too many people—especially young people and people of color—live trapped by the weight of poverty and injustice. They suffer the disparate impact of policies driven by, at best, benign neglect, and at worst, deliberate indifference. And they see how discrimination stacks the deck against them. So today, as we discuss the inequality that pervades our criminal justice system—a defining civil rights challenge of the 21st century—we must also acknowledge the broader inequalities we face in other segments of society. Because discrimination in so many areas—from the classroom, to the …
Missed Opportunities: The Unrealized Equal Protection Framework In Maher V. Roe And Harris V. Mcrae, Amelia Bailey
Missed Opportunities: The Unrealized Equal Protection Framework In Maher V. Roe And Harris V. Mcrae, Amelia Bailey
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
This Note focuses on two cases, Maher v. Roe and Harris v. McRae, and argues that they represent watershed moments in the reproductive rights movement because they positioned abortion as a fundamental right in name only. In both cases, the Supreme Court sanctioned severe funding restrictions and refused to grant poor women the right to state and federal assistance for elective and “nontherapeutic” abortions. “Non-therapeutic abortion” refers to those abortions performed or induced when the life of the mother is not endangered if the fetus is carried to term or when the pregnancy of the mother is not the …
Free Rider: A Justification For Mandatory Medical Insurance Under Health Care Reform?, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn
Free Rider: A Justification For Mandatory Medical Insurance Under Health Care Reform?, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn
Articles
Section 1501 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act added section 5000A to the Internal Revenue Code to require most individuals in the United States, beginning in the year 2014, to purchase an established minimum level of medical insurance. This requirement, which is enforced by a penalty imposed on those who fail to comply, is sometimes referred to as the “individual mandate.” The individual mandate is one element of a vast change to the provision of medical care that Congress implemented in 2010. The individual mandate has proved to be controversial and has been the subject of a number …
The Unaffordable Health Care Act - A Reponse To Professors Bagley And Horwitz, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn
The Unaffordable Health Care Act - A Reponse To Professors Bagley And Horwitz, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn
Articles
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 has stirred considerable controversy. In the public debate over the program, many of its proponents have defended it by focusing on what is sometimes called the “free-rider” problem. In a prior article, we contended that the free-rider problem has been greatly exaggerated and was not a significant factor in the congressional decision to adopt the Act. We maintained that the free-rider issue is a red herring advanced to trigger an emotional attraction to the Act and distract attention from the actual issues that favor and disfavor its adoption. In a recently …
Why It's Called The Affordable Care Act, Nicholas Bagley, Jill R. Horwitz
Why It's Called The Affordable Care Act, Nicholas Bagley, Jill R. Horwitz
Articles
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (“ACA”) raises numerous policy and legal issues, but none have attracted as much attention from lawyers as Section 1501. This provision, titled “Maintenance of Mini-mum Essential Coverage,” but better known as the “individual mandate,” requires most Americans to obtain health insurance for themselves and their dependents by 2014. We are dismayed that the narrow issue of the mandate and the narrower issue of free riding have garnered so much attention when our nation’s health-care system suffers from countless problems. By improving quality, controlling costs, and extending coverage to the uninsured, the …
Poverty And Equality: A Distant Mirror, Gene R. Nichol
Poverty And Equality: A Distant Mirror, Gene R. Nichol
Michigan Law Review
In one sense, Joel Schwartz's new effort, Fighting Poverty with Virtue, is tremendously timely. Bill Clinton's Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 was designed to "end welfare as we know it," turning greater attention to poor people's habits than to their pocketbooks. George Bush's compassionate conservatism is meant to pick up the pace, overtly seeking "to save and change lives." The White House's ominously entitled "Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives" is apparently set to unleash new waves of moral reformers. Schwartz's book seeks to provide moral, philosophical and historical sustenance for these initiatives. He focuses on …
Slumlordism As A Tort, Joseph L. Sax, Fred J. Hiestand
Slumlordism As A Tort, Joseph L. Sax, Fred J. Hiestand
Michigan Law Review
The war against poverty has been fought with rather more vigor than its initiators contemplated. Thus far, however, the major engagements have taken place in the streets of Watts and Chicago, which is not quite what they had in mind. Some, who think it odd that as we pass more laws we get more lawlessness, will perhaps content themselves by observing that the feeding hand is always bitten. Those less easily satisfied have begun to see the need for adopting some legal solutions as far reaching as the problems they are designed to abate; the following article is addressed to …
Constitutional Law - State Control Of Interstate Migration Of Indigents, Edward W. Adams
Constitutional Law - State Control Of Interstate Migration Of Indigents, Edward W. Adams
Michigan Law Review
The interstate migration of persons presents the United States with one of its most acute economic and social problems and carries in its wake a series of significant legal questions. Of paramount importance is the constitutional question whether the migration of indigents is subject to state control. To lend understanding to this problem, attention will be called first to the basic economic and social urges underlying interstate migration and second to the position of the indigent as defined by traditional legal concepts. To complete the discussion, suggestions will be offered for corrective federal legislation.
'Recent Social Trends In The United States" Report Of The President's Research Committee, Robert Cooley Angell
'Recent Social Trends In The United States" Report Of The President's Research Committee, Robert Cooley Angell
Michigan Law Review
Never before has a particular civilization taken so complete an inventory of its own activities as that presented in the two-volume Report of the President's Research Committee on Social Trends. Its more than 1600 pages are literally crammed with significant data regarding almost every conceivable aspect of American life, data gathered with great care and thoroughness by research men of unquestioned ability and scholarly standing.