Social Welfare Law Commons^™

Lena Olive Smith: A Minnesota Civil Rights Pioneer, Ann Juergens

Faculty Scholarship

Lena Olive Smith and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) created a spirited partnership in the public interest during the 1920s and 1930s. Throughout their long collaboration, this woman lawyer, her clients, and the Minneapolis branch of a national grassroots organization faced similar challenges: to stay solvent, to end segregation and increase equality, and to live with dignity. This article is divided into four sections. The first three roughly correspond with stages in Smith’s life and work. Part II briefly chronicles Smith’s first thirty six years, 1885 to 1921, as a single African-American woman in the …

Unmasking The Stranger American Welfare Residency Rules And The Encounter With The Other, Marie Failinger

Faculty Scholarship

One American welfare doctrine that refuses to die embarrasses the American optimist-modernist credo that time always brings progress. That doctrine, most recently resurrected in President Clinton's welfare reform legislation, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), permits states to impose what euphemistic bureaucrats call a "durational residency requirement" on impoverished citizens seeking government assistance to provide food, clothing, and shelter for their families. Where this rule once meant that impoverished citizens could be denied all welfare benefits for up to a year after they moved to a new state, in its current less draconian form, the …

Long Overdue: The Single Guaranteed Minimum Income Program, David Allen Larson

Faculty Scholarship

This article provides an overview of income support programs in the United States. The article first examines proposals for a guaranteed income. This initial examination consists of four separate sections. It begins with a summary of negative income tax plans. Second, it discusses legislation introduced in the United States Congress. Third, current guaranteed income proposals are examined. Finally, it concludes with a brief examination of social experiments conducted in several communities. Because no proposal for a comprehensive guaranteed income program has been adopted, this article next discusses the income maintenance programs including a short description and selected statistical information.

An Offer She Can’T Refuse: When Fundamental Rights And Conditions On Government Benefits Collide, Marie Failinger

Faculty Scholarship

This article criticizes the Maher/Harris conditions doctrine on two levels. At the first level, it suggests that the Maher/Harris doctrine cannot justify the Court’s decisions to uphold government withdrawals of funding from rights-exercises. At the second level, after exposing and contrasting the definitional presuppositions of the Court in Maher and Harris with previous cases, the article suggests that the Maher/Harris doctrine is a failure because it uses utterly inadequate rights theory to resolve emerging issues of conflicting human need and conscience, issues which are mediated by government action. The author creates a space for a discussion of a new framework …

The Minnesota Commitment Act Of 1982 Summary And Analysis, Eric S. Janus, Richard M. Wolfson

Faculty Scholarship

Minnesota law governing commitments has been substantially

revised and recodified in the Minnesota Commitment Act of 1982.

The prior law is repealed and the new law is substituted for it effective

August 1, 1982.

This article has three purposes. First, the significant changes in

the civil commitment law are identified and their implications explored.

Second, where appropriate, the legal background underlying

the changes is explored in order to place the changes in context.

Third, the article identifies ambiguities and inconsistencies in the

Act, posits resolutions, and suggests areas for legislative attention.