Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
- Publication
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Law
Social Welfare, Human Dignity, And The Puzzle Of What We Owe Each Other, Amy L. Wax
Social Welfare, Human Dignity, And The Puzzle Of What We Owe Each Other, Amy L. Wax
All Faculty Scholarship
Proponents of work-based welfare reform claim that moving the poor from welfare to work will advance the goals of economic self-reliance and independence. Reform opponents attack these objectives as ideologically motivated and conceptually incoherent. Drawing on perspectives developed by luck egalitarians and feminist theorists, these critics disparage conventional notions of economic desert, find fault with market measures of value, debunk ideals of autonomy, and emphasize the pervasiveness of interdependence and unearned benefits within free market societies. These arguments pose an important challenge to justifications usually advanced for work-based welfare reform. Reform proponents must concede that no member of society can …
Legal Transitions: Some Welfarist Remarks, Matthew D. Adler
Legal Transitions: Some Welfarist Remarks, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
This essay offers a sympathetic, utilitarian critique of Louis Kaplow's famous argument for legal retroactivity in his 1986 article, "An Economic Analysis of Legal Transitions." The argument, very roughly, is that the prospect of retroactivity is desirable if citizens are rational because it gives them a desirable incentive to anticipate legal change. My central claim is that this argument trades upon a dubious, objective view of probability that assumes rational citizens assign the same probabilities to states as rational governmental officials. But it is subjective, not objective probabilities that bear on rational choice, and the subjective probabilities of rational citizens …