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 …

Uncharted Terrain: The Intersection Of Privatization And Welfare, Rebecca L. Scharf, Henry Freedman, Mary R. Mannix, Marc Cohan

Scholarly Works

Welfare, a mainstay of legal services practice, is cutting edge again. Clients need help negotiating a system that devolution, discretion, and privatization have changed radically. Public officials need help in this new environment to "get it right," so that programs achieve the laudable goals ascribed to them.

Privatization creates special challenges for welfare advocates. New players, ranging from neighborhood nonprofit organizations to churches to multinational corporations, are making decisions that affect clients' vital interests. New legal issues, ranging from state action to public contracting compliance, can arise. Accountability and transparency, difficult to achieve in the governance of traditional welfare programs, …