Law Commons^™

A Dream Deferred, Ruth-Arlene W Howe

Ruth-Arlene W. Howe

Presentation at the MLK Annual Unity Breakfast, Boston College, January 19, 2005.

The Health Law Partnership: A Medical-Legal Partnership Strategically Designed To Provide A Coordinated Approach To Public Health Legal Services, Education, Advocacy, Evaluation, Research, And Scholarship, Robert Pettignano, Lisa Bliss, Sylvia Caley

Sylvia B. Caley

Low-income children, especially those with chronic disease and other health issues, are among the most vulnerable members of society. The Health Law Partnership, a medical-legal partnership (MLP), was developed to address the legal needs of low-income children and their families living in Georgia and who receive healthcare services from Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. HeLP's creators understood the importance of proactively addressing the social determinants of children's health, many of which have legal antecedents and result from illness and health-related complications caused by socioeconomic factors. Four attorneys saw the close link between poverty and poor health, and understood that the law …

Gift Horses, Choosy Beggars, And Other Reflections On The Role And Utility Of Social Enterprise Law, Cassady V. Brewer

Cassady V. Brewer

The U.S. law of social enterprise is growing rapidly. Since 2008, one-half of all U.S. states have modified their business law to establish special legal forms designed for social enterprise. Meanwhile, even with twenty-five states adopting special laws for social enterprise, the legal debate surrounding social enterprise continues. Rather than rehashing that debate, this essay sets forth the author’s personal perspective on the role and utility of social enterprise. The essay argues that, except in limited circumstances, social enterprise is superior to traditional philanthropy when it comes to solving longstanding humanitarian or environmental problems. U.S. business law thus should continue …

New Markets Tax Credits Stimulate Community Development, Michael Lehmann, Cassady Brewer

Cassady V. Brewer

No abstract provided.

The Silent Enemy: Current Practices For Healthcare Professionals In The Identification And Reporting Of Psychological Harm In Cases Of Domestic Violence., Matthew Raj, Ellie Mckay

Matthew Raj

Awareness and recognition of domestic violence in Australia is increasing. In 2014, the Victorian Government appointed Fiona Richardson as the first Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence and Australian domestic violence campaigner Rosie Batty, whose 11-year-old son Luke was killed by her husband, was named 2015 Australian of the Year. Also, a Special Taskforce chaired by Former Governor-General Quentin Bryce has been formed to conduct an extensive review of domestic violence in Queensland and legislative reforms have been implemented that adopt a broader concept and definition of domestic violence which include psychological harm. Despite these developments, the ability of …

From Crisis To Reform: A New Legal Aid Plan For Ontario, Frederick Zemans, Patrick Monahan, Aneurin Thomas

Frederick H. Zemans

No abstract provided.

Access To Justice For A New Century: The Way Forward, Julia H. Bass, W. A. Bogart, Frederick H. Zemans

Frederick H. Zemans

This book is a timely addition to the literature on access to justice. The book's essays address all aspects of the topic, including differing views on the meaning of access to justice; ways to improve access to legal services; litigation and its role in achieving social justice; and the roles of lawyers, citizens, and legal insitutions.

Access to Justice for a New Century is based on papers given at an international symposium presented by the Law Society of Upper Canada, sponsored by the Law Foundation of Ontario.

A New Legal Aid Plan For Ontario: Background Papers, Frederick Zemans, Patrick Monahan, Aneurin Thomas

Frederick H. Zemans

No abstract provided.

Welfare Law, Welfare Fraud And The Moral Regulation Of The 'Never Deserving' Poor, Shelley A. M. Gavigan, Dorothy E. Chunn

Shelley A. M. Gavigan

The dismantling and restructuring of Keynesian social security programmes have impacted disproportionately on women, especially lone parent mothers, and shifted public discourse and social images from welfare fraud to welfare as fraud, thereby linking poverty, welfare and crime. This article analyzes the current, inordinate focus on 'welfare cheats'. The criminalization of poverty raises theoretical and empirical questions related to regulation, control, and the relationship between them at particular historical moments. Moral regulation scholars working within post-structuralist and post-modern frameworks have developed an influential approach to these issues,however, we situate ourselves in a different stream of critical socio-legal studies that takes …

From Mothers' Allowance To Mothers Need Not Apply: Canadian Welfare Law As Liberal And Neo-Liberal Reforms, Shelley A. M. Gavigan, Dorothy E. Chunn

Shelley A. M. Gavigan

In this paper we examine changes in the form and content of Canadian welfare law through a historical, feminist lens using the exemplar of mother-headed families. Our analysis of how the state dealt with sole support mothers in several provinces throughout the twentieth century reveals important continuities, as well as discontinuities, between the past and the present that have shaped and reshaped the lives and experiences of poor women and their children. In doing so, it helps to illuminate how they have been rendered "undeserving" or "never deserving" with the neo-liberal (re)formation of the Keynesian state in Canada.

Locked In: Interactions With The Criminal Justice And Child Welfare Systems For Lgbtq Youth, Ymsm, And Ywsw Who Engage In Survival Sex, Brendan M. Conner Esq.

Brendan M. Conner

A Female Disease: The Unintentional Gendering Of Fibromyalgia Social Security Claims, Dara Purvis

Dara Purvis

Social Security disability claims are not supposed to be decided based on the gender of the applicant. Reliance on the apparently neutral mechanism of clinical medical evidence, however, has a disproportionate impact on women bringing disability claims based on fibromyalgia. Recognizing and identifying disability has been delegated by Congress and the Social Security Administration almost entirely to physicians, based upon a misguided and mistaken belief that clinical medical evidence evaluated by a trained physician will answer with certainty whether an individual claimant is capable of working. Fibromyalgia, a diffuse syndrome characterized by excess pain that is overwhelmingly diagnosed in women …

California Supreme Court Unanimously Upholds Inclusionary Zoning As Land Use Regulation And Not An Exaction, Tim Iglesias

Tim Iglesias

Local governments, housing advocates, and people who need affordable housing won a solid victory in the California Supreme Court's unanimous opinion in California Bldg. Indus. Ass'n v. City of San Jose. In a complex 64-page opinion that is clearly drafted and rigorously argued, the court held that inclusionary zoning is a constitutionally permissible strategy to produce affordable housing and to promote economic integration that is subject to rational basis review and not heightened scrutiny.

This article outlines the factual and legal background of the case and discusses the court's reasoning in reaching its decision, including the court's refusal to find …

Consuming Identities: Law, School Lunches, And What It Means To Be American, Melissa Mortazavi

Melissa Mortazavi

No abstract provided.

Poverty Law 101: The Law And History Of The U.S. Welfare State, Karen M. Tani

Karen M. Tani

Poverty law will remain marginalized so long as we confine it to a population that we and our students understand as marginal. Tani discusses Professor Wax’s characterization of the “old welfare law framework,” as well as her account of what happened to it, and would not advocate a return to a court-centered, advocacy-oriented approach.

The Smart Cities Movement And Advancing The International Battle To Eliminate Homelessness - Barcelona As Test Case, John Travis Marshall, Jessica Venegas

John Travis Marshall

Barcelona is a leader in the smart cities movement, a movement that aims to help cities deliver services to citizens more efficiently and economically as a way of making the city a more inviting and inclusive place to live and work. As with any city committed to forward-looking economic, social, and urban development initiatives, it is important to consider whether ambitious goals to reinvent the city include an agenda to solve the persistent problems that have faced major cities for decades, including affordable housing and caring for roofless or homeless men and women. This article ties together the challenges Barcelona …

Affordable Housing For Sustainable Cities: A North American Perspective, Detroit Metropolitan Area And Montreal (Quebec), Courtney Lauren Anderson, Maryse Grandbois

Courtney L Anderson

Housing is an integral part to elevating and maintaining a quality of life to ensure a healthy and productive citizenship. The overwhelming number of citizens in Montreal and the United States who are unable to find housing that is less than 33% of their income stifles that economic progression of individuals and the society in which these individuals live. The ability for cities to dictate their own plans for creating and maintaining affordable housing without mandates from the federal vacillates among the various levels of government with each level having certain positive and negative elements. Although city autonomy can provide …

Toward A More Expansive Welfare Devolution Debate, 9 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 311 (2005), Steven D. Schwinn

Steven D. Schwinn

Leading up to and in the wake of national welfare reform, commentators, scholars, and advocates debated one of the key ingredients in the 1996 legislation: devolution of responsibility for the design and administration of welfare from the federal government to the states. Pro-devolutionists argued that devolution would create 50 state welfare experiments, would result in welfare programs tailored to the unique needs of individual states, and would lead to a race to the top in the quality of welfare programs. Anti-devolutionists argued that devolution would encourage states to compete to repel welfare recipients, to avoid becoming welfare magnets, and, ultimately, …

Sidestepping Lassiter On The Path To Civil Gideon: Civil Douglas, Steven D. Schwinn

Steven D. Schwinn

Civil Gideon advocates have at each turn faced the scourge of Lassiter v. Department of Social Services, which established (apparently out of whole cloth) a presumption that indigent litigants are entitled to appointed counsel only when physical liberty is at stake. This article proposes side-stepping that presumption by seeking a right to counsel on appeal via Douglas v. California, not a right to counsel at trial via Gideon v. Wainwright. Once established, a civil right to counsel on appeal would presage the inevitable downfall of Lassiter and the establishment of Civil Gideon. This article poses the argument in federal constitutional …

Welfare Reform In A Global Economy, 11 J. Gender Race & Just. 209 (2008), Steven D. Schwinn

Steven D. Schwinn

No abstract provided.

Toward A More Expansive Welfare Devolution Debate, Steven Schwinn

Steven D. Schwinn

Leading up to and in the wake of national welfare reform, commentators, scholars, and advocates debated one of the key ingredients in the 1996 legislation: devolution of responsibility for the design and administration of welfare from the federal government to the states. Pro-devolutionists argued that devolution would create 50 state welfare experiments, would result in welfare programs tailored to the unique needs of individual states, and would lead to a race to the top in the quality of welfare programs. Anti-devolutionists argued that devolution would encourage states to compete to repel welfare recipients, to avoid becoming welfare magnets, and, ultimately, …

David Felix: Jailed By An Unjust System, Failed By City Services, Killed By Police, Brendan M. Conner Esq., Marissa Ram Esq.

Brendan M. Conner

No one claimed the body of David Felix for 21 days; instead, it lay in state at the Office of the Medical Examiner, the blackened and seared edges of the gunpowder’s stippling forming a dark halo on his ebony skin until his grief-stricken parents arrived from Haiti to identify the body of their oldest son. The “Felix David” described by the police and the New York media – none of whom got his name right – is unrecognizable to those of us who knew David Felix. The 24 year-old polyglot, aspiring fashion student and black immigrant with a love for …

The Role Of Courts In The Debate On Assisted Suicide: A Communitarian Approach, 9 Notre Dame J.L. Ethics & Pub. Pol'y 367 (1995), Donald L. Beschle

Donald L. Beschle

No abstract provided.

Legal Aid 1900 To 1930: What Happened To Law Reform?, Mark Spiegel

Mark Spiegel

The Invisible Man: The Conscious Neglect Of Men And Boys In The War On Human Trafficking, 2010 Utah L. Rev. 1143 (2010), Samuel Vincent Jones

Samuel V. Jones

No abstract provided.

Cleaning The Muck Of Ages From The Windows Into The Soul Of Income Tax, John Passant

John Passant

The aim of this paper is to provide readers with an insight into Marx’s methods as a first step to understanding income tax more generally but with specific reference to Australia’s income tax system. I do this by introducing readers to the ideas about the totality that is capitalism, appearance and form, and the dialectic in Marx’s hands. This will involve looking at income tax as part of the bigger picture of capitalism, and understanding that all things are related and changes in one produce changes in all. Appearances can be deceptive and we need to delve below the surface …

Women Made Whole: How Tort Law Can Change The Lives Of Domestic Violence And Sexual Assault Victims, Sara L. Crewson

Sara L Crewson

Tort law and insurance companies are failing to provide female domestic violence victims with adequate access to civil courts, proper legal mechanisms with which to gain that access, and are far behind the times when compared to other gender-linked crimes like those of rape and sexual assault. The Restatement of Torts (Third) has classified domestic violence as an intentional tort, and most insurance policies will not provide coverage for harms that were committed intentionally. Certain homeowners' insurance policies won't provide coverage if a spouse tries to sue another spouse for harms committed, leaving vulnerable wives unable to seek compensation for …

Insuring Floods: The Most Common And Devastating Natural Catastrophies In America, Christopher French

Christopher C. French

Protecting The Welfare Of Our Children For A Better Tomorrow, Aileen N. Gonzalez

Aileen N Gonzalez

No abstract provided.

Some Thoughts On Poverty And Failure In The Market For Children's Human Capital, Lynn A. Stout

Lynn A. Stout

No abstract provided.