Social Welfare Law Commons^™

Penalizing Poverty: Making Criminal Defendants Pay For Their Court-Appointed Counsel Through Recoupment And Contribution, Helen A. Anderson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Over thirty years ago the United States Supreme Court upheld an Oregon statute that allowed sentencing courts, with a number of important procedural safeguards, to impose on indigent criminal defendants the obligation to repay the cost of their court appointed attorneys. The practice of ordering recoupment or contribution (application fees or co-pays) of public defender attorney's fees is widespread, although collection rates are unsurprisingly low. Developments since the Court's decision in Fuller v. Oregon show that not only is recoupment not cost-effective, but it too easily becomes an aspect of punishment, rather than legitimate cost recovery. In a number of …

Effective And Constitutional: Goals For A Hurricane Response Plan In The Aftermath Of Hurricanes Katrina And Rita, Neal Mchenry

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Funny Money: How Federal Education Funding Hurts Poor And Minority Students, Cassandra Jones Havard

All Faculty Scholarship

Neither race nor class alone can predict educational achievement. However, in America, disparities in funding for education may be an impediment to educational opportunity for disadvantaged youth. At the crux of the Nation's achievement gap among minority children is the question of the how states should allocate federal education funds, and how local school districts should use those monies. Educators have long recognized that the socioeconomic circumstances of many public school students present great educational challenges. Since 1965, Congress has authorized the use of federal funds by local school districts to remedy the achievement gap.

Part I of this Article …

Evaluating Wia Using Administrative Data, Kevin Hollenbeck

Conference Papers

No abstract provided.

Collateral Children: Consequence And Illegality At The Intersection Of Foster Care And Child Support, Daniel L. Hatcher

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article is the third in a series addressing the conflict between state revenue maximization strategies and the missions of state agencies serving low-income children. The Article examines the policy of foster care cost recovery through child support enforcement. When children are removed from poor families and placed in foster care, federal law requires child welfare agencies to initiate child support obligations against the parents. Resulting payments do not benefit the children but are converted into a government funding stream to reimburse the costs of foster care. This cost recovery effort often subordinates the child welfare system’s primary goals of …

Legal Strategies To Address Child Support Obligations For Nonresident Fathers In The Child Welfare System, Daniel L. Hatcher

All Faculty Scholarship

The legal and practical issues surrounding child support obligations have enormous impact on families in the child welfare system. Unfortunately, these issues are often ignored, overlooked, or misunderstood. A much-needed effort to engage nonresident fathers in the child welfare system is underway, but those efforts will often be derailed if child support is not properly addressed. This article sheds light on the legal and policy concerns regarding child support enforcement in child protection cases and provides legal strategies for advocates to address those concerns. While primarily aimed at advocates for nonresident fathers, this article should also benefit advocates for custodial …

Low Probability/High Consequence Events: Dilemmas Of Damage Compensation, Richard O. Lempert

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

This article was prepared for a Clifford Symposium which challenged paper writers to imagine how our system of tort compensation might look in the year 2020. This paper responds to an aspect of the general challenge: to imagine a tort recovery system which would deal adequately with rare and catastrophic events. To get a handle on this problem, the paper looks closely at how the legal system compensated damages attendant on four recent events that might be considered “rare and catastrophic” – Three Mile Island, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and the Exxon Valdez oil spill. In no case did the system …

Transforming Legal Aid, Ronald W. Staudt

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Minnesota Mandates: County Government Fiscal Stress In An Era Of Declining State Support, Selena Krueth

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Minnesota counties are experiencing more than just financial burdens from state mandates these days. Counties and local governments currently are seeking the most effective solution of implementing state mandates; leaving behind the argument of no mandates without funding to "give us mandates that work". In my analysis I combined county budgetary and demographic data, with phone survey data gathered from Minnesota counties. I anticipate results that will show a wide variety in county administrator attitudes towards state mandates and varying local capacity to meet them. Costly state mandates, such as health services, and large county populations have proven significant in …

Children's Health Insurance Program: The Dynamics Of Federalism And Health Care Policy, Erik White

Political Science Theses and Capstones

On February 4^th, 2009, President Obama signed into law the reauthorization of the Children Health Insurance Program. The federal government will now spend 30 billion dollars towards the goal of ensuring that more children in the United States are insured. I investigate this particular health care policy and look at the different dynamics that affect the ultimate goal of universal health insurance for children. Because this program allows for state flexibility under broad federal guidelines, one is able to look at individual states, and their particular actions and characteristics, to determine the best approach to insuring the most …

Why Paretians Can’T Prescribe: Preferences, Principles, And Imperatives In Law And Policy, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Recent years have witnessed two linked revivals in the legal academy. The first is renewed interest in articulating a normative “master principle” by which legal rules might be evaluated. The second is renewed interest in the prospect that a variant of Benthamite “utility” might serve as the requisite touchstone. One influential such variant now in circulation is what the Article calls “Paretian welfarism.”

This Article rejects Paretian welfarism and advocates an alternative it calls “fair welfare.” It does so because Paretian welfarism is inconsistent with ethical, social, and legal prescription, while fair welfare is what we have been groping for …

Judicial Adherence To A Minimum Core Approach To Socio-Economic Rights – A Comparative Perspective, Joie Chowdhury

Cornell Law School Inter-University Graduate Student Conference Papers

Today’s world is witness to extraordinary inequality and the most desperate poverty. Millions of people across the world have no access to adequate food or water, basic health care or minimum levels of education. There are many avenues through which to approach the issue of improving socio-economic conditions. Courts, especially recently, have in certain countries, been seeking to ameliorate these conditions, to some extent, through the means of socio-economic rights adjudication.

For courts to effectively empower people to realize their socio-economic rights, attention to implementation of judgments is essential. A strong normative base for such judgments is just as crucial, …

Effectiveness Of Reemployment Strategies, Christopher J. O'Leary

Conference Papers

No abstract provided.

Congress Needs To Help Victims Of Foreclosures, Bernadette Atuahene

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Laboratories Of Destitution: Democratic Experimentalsim And The Failure Of Antipoverty Law, David A. Super

Faculty Scholarship

Democratic experimentalism, the procedural component of the “new governance” movement, has won widespread acceptance in calling for decentralization, deliberation, deregulation, and experimentation. Democratic experimentalists claim that this approach offers pragmatic solutions to social problems. Although the democratic experimentalist movement formally began only a decade ago, antipoverty law has reflected its major principles since the 1960s. This experiment has gone badly, weakening antipoverty programs. Key elements of this participatory approach to antipoverty law – decentralization, privatization, and the substitution of ad hoc problemsolving for individual rights – all contributed to the calamity that low-income people suffered during and after Hurricane Katrina. …

Brief For Amicus Curiae David A. Super: Supporting Plaintiff-Appellants Urging Reversal, In Howard V. Hawkins (2009)., David A. Super

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court has consistently held that congressional intent governs whether federal statutes are privately enforceable. Where Congress has been silent, a line of cases culminating in Gonzaga Univ. v. Doe, 536 U.S. 273 (2002), prescribes a formula for inferring congressional intent from the structure of a statute. Here, however, Congress has not been silent: the Food and Nutrition Act specifies the amount of retroactive benefits that may be awarded households in “any judicial action arising under this Act” and makes certain records of state agencies “available for review in any action filed by a household to enforce any provision …

Migration, Development, And The Promise Of Cedaw For Rural Women, Lisa R. Pruitt

Michigan Journal of International Law

Part I of this Essay provides an overview of the rural-to-urban migration phenomenon, a trend the author calls the urban juggernaut. This Part includes a discussion of forces compelling the migration, and it also considers consequences for those who are left behind when their family members and neighbors migrate to cities. Part II explores women's roles in food production in the developing world, and it considers the extent to which international development efforts encourage or entail urbanization. Part III attends to the potential of human rights for this population, analyzing the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination …

100 Years Strong: Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services And The On-Going Pursuit For Equal Rights And Equal Justice, Tom I. Romero

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

As the lead essay in the Hamline Journal of Public Law and Policy's symposium issue on "Barriers to Justice: Responding to the Needs of the Low-Income Population in America," our essay provides a narrative account of the history of legal aid in Minnesota. From its humble origins in the basement of a mutual aid society in 1909 to the recent broad based community-lawyering programs for immigrants, the disabled, and those families who were hurt by predatory lending practices at the start of the 21st century, this is an "insiders" legal history concerning the values, people, and public private collaborative practices …

Orphan Train Myths And Legal Reality , Rebecca S. Trammell

The Modern American

No abstract provided.

The Law And The Host Of The Canterbury Tales, 43 J. Marshall L. Rev. 51 (2009), Frederick B. Jonassen

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Responsible Development? The Need For Revision To Seattle's Inclusionary Housing Plan, Jay A. Riffkin

Seattle University Law Review

This Comment explores how Seattle's enactment of a limited inclusionary housing plan can effectively meet the challenges of responsible development, both satisfying the city's need for density and affordability and maintaining an economic environment conducive to developer profitability. Although Seattle's current inclusionary housing plan may give adequate incentives to developers, the city needs to move away from its current voluntary plan and toward a mandatory plan that balances increasing developer incentives with a demand for affordable onsite development to serve a broader spectrum of income levels. Part II of this Comment lays out the background of exclusionary and inclusionary zoning …

A Comment On Untangling The Safety Net: Protecting Federal Benefits From Freezes, Fees, And Garnishment, By Allen C. Myers, Phillip T. Lacy

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Recruiting And Selecting Child Welfare Staff, Michelle Graef, Megan Paul, Tara L. Myers

Center on Children, Families, and the Law: Faculty Publications

In this chapter, the focus is on recruiting and selecting new staff and on the steps agencies can take to ensure that they are doing the best possible job to attract and hire a high-performing, committed workforce. This chapter reviews a number of strategies for improving recruitment and selection processes and provides case examples from the authors' work with child protection agencies in several states. These projects have been accomplished by a team of researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Center on Children, Families, and the Law (CCFL). Some of the techniques described here will be familiar, whereas others are …

Foreword: Poverty Law Issue, Ann Juergens

Faculty Scholarship

This Poverty Law Issue provides testimony as to why and how the legal profession, the government, and society can better provide justice for people of small means. Overall, this Poverty Law Issue contributes to understanding how we may ensure that the difficulty of poverty borne by our fellow citizens does not become compounded by injustice. For when justice is compromised for one group, its integrity as a whole may rightly be questioned.

Restoring Legal Aid To The Poor: A Call To End Draconian And Wasteful Restrictions, Rebekah Diller, Emily Savner

Fordham Urban Law Journal

A growing number of national, state, and local voices have called for reform of the legal services restrictions. Reports by Access to Justice and legal services commissions in eighteen states have identified the restrictions as substantial barriers to justice.Others have spoken out about the harms of the restrictions, and particularly their application to non-LSC funds. Describing a lawsuit filed by Oregon against the “program integrity rule,” Governor Ted Kulongoski said: “The important point is that for the first time a state is now party to a suit that attempts to free Legal Aid from restrictions that serve no purpose other …

Untangling The Safety Net: Protecting Federal Benefits From Freezes, Fees, And Garnishmentt, Allen C. Myers

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Home Sweet Home? The Efficacy Of Rental Restrictions To Promote Neighborhood Stability, Ngai Pindell

Scholarly Works

Homeownership is an enduring and fundamental American tradition whose economic and social benefits are well examined and have received renewed attention in recent articles and books. Tax laws encourage homeownership; debtor-creditor and property laws protect homeowners; and constitutional protections defend homeowners from governmental attempts to exercise eminent domain.

The current economic and housing crises have forced commentators and policymakers to reexamine the connection between traditional conceptions of homeownership and economic stability, particularly for low-income residents. This article questions that traditional conception by exploring how local governments, in an effort to promote regulatory land use goals, frequently limit homeowners' power to …

Whose Safety Net? Reflections On "Untangling", Henry L. Woodward

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Missing Jurisprudence Of The Legislated Constitution, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Does the fourteenth Amendment and its Equal Protection Clause — the promise that "no state shall deny equal protection of the laws" — have any relevance to the progressive project of reducing economic inequality in various spheres of life or, more modestly, of ameliorating the multiple vulnerabilities of this country's poor people? The short answer, I believe, is, it depends. It will depend, in 2020, just as it depends now, on what we mean by the Constitution we are expounding: the Constitution as read and interpreted by courts — the adjudicated Constitution — or what I propose to call the …

The Deficit Reduction Act Of 2005 - Reducing The Number Of Recipients And Applicants Eligible To Receive Medicaid Benefits, Christal Contini

Journal of Law and Health

Medically impaired individuals such as George, as well as disaster victims, mentally handicapped persons, homeless persons, and foster children, will be adversely affected by the new citizenship documentation requirements imposed upon the states by the Act. States will also be adversely affected by the increased administrative costs of implementing the Act's requirements. This note asserts that aspects of the citizenship verification requirements treat citizen applicants worse than immigrant applicants, which violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Amendments should be made to the United States Code and the Code of Federal Regulations to ease the burden on individuals …