Social Welfare Law Commons^™

Due Process Implications Of Telephone Hearings: The Case For An Individual Approach To Scheduling Telephone Hearings, Allan A. Toubman, Tim Mcardle, Linda Rogers-Tomer

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Abstract for a piece in the 1995 Unemployment Compensation: Continuity and Change symposium presented by the Advisory Council on Unemployment Compensation and the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform.

Torquemada And Unemployment Compensation Appeals, William W. Milligan

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Abstract for a piece in the 1995 Unemployment Compensation: Continuity and Change symposium presented by the Advisory Council on Unemployment Compensation and the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform.

Federal Law Requirements For The Unemployment Compensation System: Interpretation And Application, Gerard Hildebrand

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Abstract for a piece in the 1995 Unemployment Compensation: Continuity and Change symposium presented by the Advisory Council on Unemployment Compensation and the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform.

Unemployment Compensation For Employees Of Educational Institutions: How State Courts Have Created Variations On Federally Mandated Statutory Language, Maribeth Wilt-Seibert

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Abstract for a piece in the 1995 Unemployment Compensation: Continuity and Change symposium presented by the Advisory Council on Unemployment Compensation and the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform.

Fathers, The Welfare System, And The Virtues And Perils Of Child-Support Enforcement, David L. Chambers

Articles

For half a century, Aid to Families with Dependent Children ("AFDC")' -the program of federally supported cash assistance to low-income families with children-has been oddly conceived. Congress has chosen to make assistance available almost solely to low-income single-parent families, not all low-income parents with children. At first many of the eligible single parents were women whose husbands had died. Over time, a growing majority were women who had been married to their children's father but who had separated or divorced. Today, to an ever increasing extent, they are women who were never married to the fathers of their children.2

Building Community Among Diversity: Legal Services For Impoverished Immigrants, Robert L. Bach

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Part I of this Essay introduces the Immigrants' Legal Needs Study (ILNS), which provides most of the data for this Essay. Part II focuses on immigrants' access to legal assistance. It analyzes the problems and needs of recently arrived poor immigrants-both immigrants share with longer established poor residents as well as special needs related to immigrants' residency status. Part III addresses the present day demography of our urban communities, including the levels of new immigration. Parts IV and V detail the legal difficulties faced by poor immigrants, the ways they deal with these problems, and community responses to these needs. …

Lawyers At The Prison Gates: Organizational Structure And Corrections Advocacy, Susan P. Sturm

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article attempts to fill the gaps in the discussion of public interest advocacy by exploring the roles of various legal organizations in providing representation to inmates challenging the conditions and practices in prisons, jails, and juvenile justice institutions. It is an outgrowth of a study conducted for the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation on the extent and quality of representation in corrections litigation. It puts forward an organizational change model of public interest advocacy as the most promising strategy for legal representation in the corrections area. It then identifies the major organizational providers of representation, assesses where they fall on …

The Income Tax Treatment Of Social Welfare Benefits, Jonathan Barry Forman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Part I of this Article describes the major social welfare programs in the United States. Part II outlines the basic structure of the federal income tax and describes how social welfare benefits are treated by the income tax system. Finally, Part III surveys some recent proposals to tax particular social welfare benefits and considers the arguments for and against taxing such benefits. The Article concludes that the need for new revenue sources will push the federal government to reconsider the tax treatment of social welfare benefits.

Disentitling The Poor: Waivers And Welfare "Reform", Susan Bennett, Kathleen A. Sullivan

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article examines the purposes underlying the statutory grant of authority to Health and Human Services (HHS) to exempt states from the requirements of the statute, the important role that the Social Security Act has played as a source of rights for welfare recipients, the current wave of exemptions granted by HHS, and the lack of standards for review of state waiver proposals. Finally, this Article recommends the development of procedures and standards for review by HHS and urges that adherence to the core values of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program is essential in evaluating the …

Reforming Welfare Through Social Security, Stephen D. Sugarman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In this Article, I first want to illustrate the connection between Social Security and AFDC-to explain the Social Security program and to demonstrate how it contributes to the welfare problem. More importantly, I then want to offer a reform proposal that builds on Social Security as a way to begin to eliminate AFDC and the current welfare problem. Simply put, I propose that Social Security should provide benefits to children with absent parents on the same basic terms on which it now provides benefits to children with deceased, disabled, or retired parents.

Foreword: The Many Contexts Of Welfare Reform, Jeffrey S. Lehman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

To nourish the ongoing debate, the editors of the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform have drawn together contributions from four law professors who have substantial expertise concerning the American welfare state. All of the Articles that compose this Symposium are animated by a desire to broaden our frame of reference for evaluating welfare reform. I believe that their shared project is important. Efforts to change AFDC will send ripples through the multiple legal structures that buoy our public systems of income support and wealth redistribution.

Of Citizen Suits And Citizen Sunstein, Harold J. Krent, Ethan G. Shenkman

Michigan Law Review

After briefly summarizing Lujan and addressing Sunstein's critique, we explore the concept of accountability underlying the creation of a single executive in Article II. We then apply our theory of the unitary executive to several examples of broad grants of statutory standing, concluding that Congress can confer standing on private citizens only if it specifically articulates and individuates the interests whose violation gives rise to a cognizable case. Although we agree with Sunstein's view that broad grants of statutory standing do not necessarily trench upon constitutional values, we ultimately side with Justice Scalia in concluding that universal citizen standing, as …

Repossession: Of History, Poverty, And Dissent, Martha Minow

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Dispossessed: America's Underclasses from the Civil War to the Present by Jacqueline Jones

What's Standing After Lujan? Of Citizen Suits, "Injuries," And Article Iii, Cass R. Sunstein

Michigan Law Review

In this article, I have two principal goals. The first is to explain why Lujan's invalidation of a congressional grant of standing is a misinterpretation of the Constitution. It is now apparently the law that Article III forbids Congress from granting standing to "citizens" to bring suit. But this view, building on an unfortunate innovation in standing law by Justice William 0. Douglas, is surprisingly novel. It has no support in the text or history of Article III. It is essentially an invention of federal judges, and recent ones at that. Certainly it should not be accepted by judges …

America's Misunderstood Welfare State: Persistent Myths, Enduring Realities, Rachel D. Godsil

Michigan Law Review

A Review of America's Misunderstood Welfare State: Persistent Myths, Enduring Realities by Theodore R. Marmor, Jerry L. Mashaw, and Philip L. Harvey

Dependency In The Welfare State: Beyond The Due Process Vision, Richard O. Lempert

Reviews

The due process revolution has failed. Never mind that this verdict is an oversimplified exaggeration. It is closer to the truth than its opposite. Giving powerless, dependent, poor people property interests in their welfare benefits and the right to call those who exercise discretion over them legally into account does not magically cure the poverty, powerlessness, or dependency that motivated the extension of rights in the first instance. The optimistic view of legality that motivated much of the social activism of the late sixties and early seventies inevitably gives way before the reality of being poor.

The Impact Of Public Abortion Funding Decisions On Lndigent Women: A Proposal To Reform State Statutory And Constitutional Abortion Funding Provisions, Carole A. Corns

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note argues that state legislatures should relax funding restrictions on abortions for indigent women and proposes specific mechanisms to ensure the equal protection of indigent women in the abortion context. Part I briefly recounts the history of federal funding for abortions, from the liberal post-Roe funding scheme to the restrictive funding arrangements that have prevailed since the early 1980s. Part II surveys the existing literature and discusses patterns of state funding and the impact of funding restrictions on indigent women seeking abortions. This literature shows that the tightening of state funding policies subsequent to the federal Medicaid restrictions has …

Commentary: Meeting The Financial Needs Of Children, David L. Chambers

Articles

Those who drafted the equitable distribution statutes adopted in New York and elsewhere wanted to help assure women and children an acceptable level of financial well-being after divorce. Marsha Garrison has shown that divorcing couples rarely possess enough resources to attain financial well-being even when they live together as a couple, let alone when they live in two separate households. She has also shown that, even in the cases of couples with substantial assets, the broad and general language of the equitable distribution statute did not lead (and could not have been expected to lead) to consistent distributions that assured …

Homelessness: A Historical Perspective On Modern Legislation, Mark Peters

Michigan Law Review

This Note will demonstrate how current legislative responses to homelessness are bound and crippled by the social reform theories of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Before legislators can devise more efficient remedies to tackle current problems, they must identify and transcend earlier, ineffective thinking. This requires viewing the homelessness problem· in historical perspective. Specifically, legislatures must (1) examine the origins of the legal system's underlying conceptions about homelessness, (2) understand how these conceptions undermined earlier legislation designed to deal with the crisis, and (3) isolate, and escape, the modem manifestations of these conceptions.

This Note examines the early twentieth …

Family Support Of The Disabled: A Legislative Proposal To Create Incentives To Support Disabled Family Members, Judith G. Mcmullen

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Several authorities in the field of estate planning have examined in great detail the options currently available to the parents of disabled children. The options are limited. Ideally, laws should address the concerns of the families of disabled children while providing those families with the incentive to help bear the financial costs of providing for their children. New legislation is needed to achieve this dual objective. This legislation must establish a method by which parents can improve meaningfully the quality of a surviving disabled child's life without substantially increasing the social cost of supporting that disabled child. This Article proposes …

Legal Aid, Public Service And Clinical Legal Education: Future Directions From India And The United States, Frank S. Bloch, Iqbal S. Ishar

Michigan Journal of International Law

In this article, the legal aid traditions and broader public service agendas of clinical legal education in both countries are explored. These sections are followed by a comparison of the legal aid and public service components of the clinical curriculum in the two countries. It is observed that while clinical programs in the United States have tended to shift their focus away from legal aid and public service goals to broader academic and educational goals consistent with the integration of clinical legal education into the law school mainstream, clinical programs in India have remained firmly rooted in and closely tied …

Gideon V. Wainwright A Quarter-Century Later, Yale Kamisar

Articles

In a brief working paper sent to all conference participants, Professor Burt Neuborne suggested that we might consider several themes, among them "Gideon Celebrated," "Gideon Fulfilled," and "Gideon Betrayed." I think these are useful headings.

Tenants' Rights In Police Power Condemnations Under State Statutes And Procedural Due Process, Eric Wills Orts

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note explores the legal arguments available to tenants who want to resist arbitrary or unjustified condemnations of their buildings. Part I provides an overview of the legal and constitutional structure of the police power to condemn buildings. Part II analyzes state statutes governing the condemnation of buildings. Focusing on the statutory rights to notice and opportunity for a hearing provided to tenants, Part II concludes that a majority of states provide inadequate protection for tenants facing eviction by condemnation. Part II then proposes statutory reform, based on an approach taken by a minority of states. Part III demonstrates that …

Untangling "Operation Common Sense": Reopening And Review Of Social Security Administration Disability Claims, Elizabeth S. Ferguson

Michigan Law Review

Part I of the Note outlines how the SSA processes a disability claim and illustrates the ambiguity in the language of the reopening regulations that has caused the split in the courts. Part II examines the four interpretations of the reopening regulations created by courts. Part II begins with the Secretary's interpretation and concludes that this interpretation is plainly inconsistent with the language of the regulations. Thus, courts need not defer, as they normally would, to an agency's interpretation of its own regulation. This Part next examines the alternative interpretations of these regulations advanced by various courts, and describes how …

Families In Peril, Nellie Pappas

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Families in Peril by Marian Wright Edelman

The Public Defender, Robert R. Kimball

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Public Defender by Lisa J. McIntyre

The Treatment Of Mandatory Tax Withholdings In Calculating Afdc Benefits: Fairness As A Relevant Inference In Ascertaining Congressional Intent, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note contends that the more appropriate construction of the statute is to view mandatory tax withholdings as nonincome and nonwork expense items. Part I traces the pre-OBRA legislative and administrative history and examines the judicial interpretations of 42 U.S.C. section 602(a)(7) "income" and section 602(a)(8) "earned income." It concludes that under the "availability" principle, tax withholdings have always been regarded as nonincome items distinct from work expenses. It contends that, notwithstanding contradictory language in the regulations implementing section 602(a)(8), the status of tax withholdings as nonincome items under section 602(a)(7) is controlling. Part II considers the legislative history and …

The Politics Of Welfare: The New York City Experience, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Politics of Welfare: The New York City Experience by Blanche Bernstein

Irs Denials Of Charitable Status: A Social Welfare Organization Problem, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that the courts and the Service should recognize social welfare organizations as charitable and, consequently, contributions to such organizations should be tax deductible. Part I describes the Service's position and sets forth the statutory arguments supporting it. Part II raises two objections to the Service's position: (1) the distinction between social welfare organizations and charitable organizations lacks an adequate statutory justification, and (2) this distinction produces unpredictable and arbitrary results. Part III proposes that all social welfare organizations be accorded charitable status under subsection 50l(c)(3). This proposal would eliminate the arbitrary results now reached by the Service, …

Poor People's Lawyers In Transition, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Poor People's Lawyers in Transition by Jack Katz