Social Welfare Law Commons^™

Poverty In America: Why Can't We End It?, Peter B. Edelman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The lowest percentage in poverty since we started counting was 11.1 percent in 1973. The rate climbed as high as 15.2 percent in 1983. In 2000, after a spurt of prosperity, it went back down to 11.3 percent, and yet 15 million more people are poor today.

At the same time, we have done a lot that works. From Social Security to food stamps to the earned-income tax credit and on and on, we have enacted programs that now keep 40 million people out of poverty. Poverty would be nearly double what it is now without these measures, according to …

The Class Differential In Privacy Law, Michele E. Gilman

All Faculty Scholarship

This article analyzes how privacy law fails the poor. Due to advanced technologies, all Americans are facing corporate and governmental surveillance. However, privacy law is focused on middle-class concerns about limiting the disclosure of personal data so that it is not misused. By contrast, along the welfare-to-work continuum, poor people face privacy intrusions at the time that the state or their employers gather data. This data collection tends to be stigmatizing and humiliating, and it thus not only compounds the harmful effects of living in poverty, but also dampens democratic participation by the poor. The poor interact with the government …

The Place Of Law In Ivan Illich's Vision Of Social Transformation, Bruce K. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

This Article discusses Ivan Illich’s direction for social reform that led to his book, "Tools for Conviviality", where Illich targeted development, technology, and the exploitation of nature. Illich identified three key cultural institutions that needed to be reclaimed in order to bring about an inversion of industrial society: science, language, and law. This Article focuses on the rule of law and its central institutional invention—formal adjudication.

The Author suggests that Illich’s idealism can still be found in the law reform litigation effort and identifies the diminished stature of the ideal of disinterested adjudication as a significant threat to Illich’s hopes …

Don't Forget Dad: Addressing Women's Poverty By Rethinking Forced And Outdated Child Support Policies, Daniel L. Hatcher

All Faculty Scholarship

In the dialogues regarding reducing poverty among women, especially mothers, the inextricably linked issues surrounding low-income men must be simultaneously considered. In social policy addressing women’s poverty, poor fathers have too often been considered primarily as an enemy to be pursued rather than a fellow victim of poverty’s wrath, and potential partner towards the cure. We want someone to blame, and many assume that poor single mothers are best served by always being encouraged — and even forced — to pursue the noncustodial fathers for financial support through adversarial means. Mothers applying for public assistance are forced to sue the …

Preemption & The Regulatory Paradigm In The Roberts Court, Christina E. Wells, William E. Marcantel, Dave Winters

Faculty Publications

This short article first examines the Court's general preemption doctrine, including relevant criticisms. It then details the rise of the regulatory paradigm in the Supreme Court's cases, especially as it culminates in the Roberts Court's reliance on it. Finally, it examines potential implications of increasing reliance on that paradigm, including manipulation of preemption doctrine by judges, continued deference to agency officials' decisions to preempt, and adverse effects on individual tort plaintiffs.

Pledge Your Body For Your Bread: Welfare, Drug Testing, And The Inferior Fourth Amendment, Jordan C. Budd

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Proposals to subject welfare recipients to periodic drug testing have emerged over the last three years as a significant legislative trend across the United States. Since 2007, over half of the states have considered bills requiring aid recipients to submit to invasive extraction procedures as an ongoing condition of public assistance. The vast majority of the legislation imposes testing without regard to suspected drug use, reflecting the implicit assumption that the poor are inherently predisposed to culpable conduct and thus may be subject to class-based intrusions that would be inarguably impermissible if inflicted on the less destitute. These proposals are …

Pledge Your Body For Your Bread: Welfare, Drug Testing, And The Inferior Fourth Amendment, Jordan C. Budd

Law Faculty Scholarship

Proposals to subject welfare recipients to periodic drug testing have emerged over the last three years as a significant legislative trend across the United States. Since 2007, over half of the states have considered bills requiring aid recipients to submit to invasive extraction procedures as an ongoing condition of public assistance. The vast majority of the legislation imposes testing without regard to suspected drug use, reflecting the implicit assumption that the poor are inherently predisposed to culpable conduct and thus may be subject to class-based intrusions that would be inarguably impermissible if inflicted on the less destitute. These proposals are …

Use Of Ui And Es By Recent Tanf Leavers, Christopher J. O'Leary

Conference Papers

No abstract provided.

Tanf And Low-Income Family Support: Hearing Before The H. Subcomm. On Income Security And Family Support Of The H. Comm. On Ways And Means, 111th Cong., Mar. 11, 2010 (Statement Of Professor Peter B. Edelman, Geo. U. L. Center), Peter B. Edelman

Testimony Before Congress

TANF should be a work-based safety net that strengthens families. The history of the past fourteen years shows the way to improving it for the future. It would be more successful in promoting work if it analyzed the individual needs and challenges of recipients and provided tailored education, training, support services, and other assistance to help people get and keep jobs. It would be more successful as a safety net if benefits were increased and if people in need could succeed in greater numbers in gaining access to the program.

A Fourth Amendment For The Poor Alone: Subconstitutional Status And The Myth Of The Inviolate Home, Jordan C. Budd

Law Faculty Scholarship

For much of our nation’s history, the poor have faced pervasive discrimination in the exercise of fundamental rights. Nowhere has the impairment been more severe than in the area of privacy. This Article considers the enduring legacy of this tradition with respect to the Fourth Amendment right to domestic privacy. Far from a matter of receding historical interest, the diminution of the poor’s right to privacy has accelerated in recent years and now represents a powerful theme within the jurisprudence of poverty. Triggering this development has been a series of challenges to aggressive administrative practices adopted by localities in the …

Book Review, Chad J. Schatzle

Scholarly Works

Welfare's Forgotten Past: A Socio-Legal History of the Poor Law is a timely reminder of society's legal duty to the poor. In an era of global economic turmoil, with recent welfare reform and heated debates over the extension of unemployment benefits here in the United States, it is easy to forget that laws for the relief of poverty have roots reaching back more than 400 years. Author Lorie Charlesworth, Reader in Law and History at Liverpool John Moores University, focuses her book on the poor law-a historical, English system derived largely from the seventeenth-century laws of settlement and removal, which …

Stratification Of The Welfare Poor: Intersections Of Gender, Race & "Worthiness" In Poverty Discourse And Policy, Bridgette Baldwin

Faculty Scholarship

This Article analyzes the historical, cultural and legal treatments and representations of poor black women from Progressive Era philanthropic aid to early "work-to-welfare" reform protocol. When black women serve as the case study for a larger examination of social policy issues we see that welfare was rarely meant to remedy the structural crunch of poverty. Working class black women have been at the center of the construction of the poor and serve as the designation to determine which people deserve to be compensated for being poor.

Furthermore, the Author discusses both the ramifications and rationale of why the government never …

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 …

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 …

Pareto Versus Welfare, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Many normatively oriented economists, legal academics and other policy analysts appear to be "welfarist" and Paretian to at least moderate degree: They deem positive responsiveness to individual preferences, and satisfaction of one or more of the familiar Pareto criteria, to be reasonably undemanding and desirable attributes of any social welfare function (SWF) employed to formulate social evaluations. Some theorists and analysts go further than moderate welfarism or Paretianism, however: They argue that "the Pareto principle" requires the SWF be responsive to individual preferences alone - a position I label "strict" welfarism - and conclude that all social evaluation should in …

Stephen James On The Battle For Welfare Rights: Politics And Poverty In Modern America By Felicia Kornbluh. Philadelphia: University Of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. 287pp., Stephen James

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The Battle for Welfare Rights: Politics and Poverty in Modern America by Felicia Kornbluh. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. 287pp.

A Truly Good Work: Turning To Restorative Justice For Answers To The Welfare-To-Work Dilemma, Marie Failinger

Faculty Scholarship

U.S. welfare programs have traditionally come with strings attached: recipients must work for their benefits. I argue that there is a more practical and less morally repugnant way to marry work and welfare if proponents of work as well as their opponents would be willing to give up the unrealistic expectations they have placed on state-run public assistance programs, and define a clear and limited relationship between work and need for economically vulnerable people. Just as it has offered an alternative to both the pure retributivist and rehabilitation models in the area of criminal corrections, the principles and practices of …

In Supreme Judgment Of The Poor: The Role Of The United States Supreme Court In Welfare Law And Policy, Bridgette Baldwin

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the major Supreme Court rulings since the late 1960s that have directly addressed Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), commonly known as welfare. The Supreme Court decided cases, such as King v. Smith, Shapiro v. Thompson, and Goldberg v. Kelly, in favor of welfare recipients. The outcomes of these cases suggest that while the Supreme Court viewed welfare policy as a negotiation between federal and state governments, it reserved a special role for the judicial branch in protecting equal rights. The judicial understanding of the relationship between federal and state government power within welfare policy ranged …

Welfare, Privacy, And Feminism, Michele E. Gilman

University of Baltimore Law Forum

Feminism has long been concerned with privacy. Second-wave feminists assailed the divide between the public and the private spheres that trapped women in the home, excluded them from the workforce, and subjected them to domestic abuse. Second-wave feminists also argued in favor of a sphere of privacy that would allow women to make reproductive choices without state interference. These were powerful critiques of existing power structures, but they tended to overlook the experiences of poor women. As a condition of receiving welfare benefits, poor women have been subjected to drug tests, and they continue to face unannounced home inspections by …

"Bad" Mothers And Spanish-Speaking Caregivers, Annette R. Appell

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Bearing Witness To Economic Injustices Of Undocumented Immigrant Families: A New Class Of "Undeserving" Poor, Francine J. Lipman

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Fighting Poverty With Faith: Reflections On Ten Years Of Charitable Choice, Michele E. Gilman

All Faculty Scholarship

Since 1996, the federal government has undertaken major initiatives to fund religious organizations to deliver social services. These programs, called charitable choice, continue to expand and now account for over $2 billion in social welfare spending. However, charitable choice blurs the lines between church and state and is thus highly controversial. This article reflects on ten years of experience with charitable choice and assesses the impact and effectiveness of these programs. There is little empirical evidence that faith-based social services are superior to secular programs. Moreover, religious grantees, and congregations in particular, are often unable to manage large federal grants …

What Is The Use Of International Law? International Law As A 21st Century Guardian Of Welfare, Emmanuelle Jouannet

Michigan Journal of International Law

The thesis of this Essay is that international law currently represents a welfare-driven and bio-political structuring mode for international society which not only counterbalances liberal economic globalization, but also draws from it. This inquiry offers a political interpretation of contemporary international law to clarify its functioning and the effects of its legal rationality, as well as to answer the question of its efficacy. An evolution has taken place for at least a century and has only attainted partial completion. It is the fruit of modernity that constantly projects its aspirations, its unity, and its contradictions onto the international legal system. …

Child Support Harming Children: Subordinating The Best Interests Of Children To The Fiscal Interests Of The State, Daniel L. Hatcher

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the government policy of seeking reimbursement of welfare costs through child support enforcement. Under our welfare program, Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), custodial parents applying for benefits are required to establish child support obligations against the absent parents and to assign the resulting child support payments to the government. As a result, half of the $105 billion in national child support debt is owed to the government rather than to children. The government's fiscal interests are in direct conflict with the best interests of the children - the controlling legal standard in child support matters. The …

Contract Law And Distribution In The Age Of Welfare Reform, Daniela Caruso

Faculty Scholarship

This Article tracks the ongoing adaptation of U.S. contract law to the 1990s’ contraction of the welfare state. Some courts strive to compensate for the shortage of welfare services and to pursue redistributive goals. This Article provides examples of this trend and then analyzes the non-linear relation between doctrines, judicial redistribution, and welfare politics in both case law and scholarship. Finally, this Article discusses the role of socially sensitive judicial discourse in light of contemporary welfare politics and explains its continuing importance.

Foster Children Paying For Foster Care, Daniel L. Hatcher

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the legality and policy concerns of state foster care agencies using children's Social Security benefits as a state funding stream. The practice requires foster children who are disabled or have deceased or disabled parents to pay for their own care. Often with the assistance of private consultants under contingency fee contracts, agencies look for children who are eligible for Social Security benefits and interject themselves as the children's representative payees. Rather than using the benefits to serve the children's unmet needs, the agencies use their fiduciary power to access the children's benefits and apply the funds to …

The Return Of The Ring: Welfare Reform’S Marriage Cure As The Revival Of Post-Bellum Control, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

In 1996, the United States Congress began its imposition of a marital solution to poverty when it enacted the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act ("PRWORA"). Nearly ten years later, Congress has strengthened its commitment to marriage as a cure for welfare dependency with proposals such as the Personal Responsibility, Work, and Family Promotion Act of 2005. If passed, this bill would provide 1.5 billion dollars for pro-marriage programs and require each state to explain how its welfare program will encourage marriage for single mothers who receive public aid. With these proposals, Congress has continued to construct poverty as …

Poverty And Communitarianism: Toward A Community Based Welfare System, Michele E. Gilman

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article analyzes how communitarian political theory addresses poverty and impacts American social welfare programs. For several decades, communitarian and liberal philosophers have debated how best to achieve justice through their competing notions of personhood. Whereas liberal theorists stress the values of individual autonomy and state neutrality, communitarians assert that people are socially constituted and that liberalism therefore pays too little attention to the value of community. Yet despite their attempts to articulate a superior form of justice, communitarian theorists either ignore or misunderstand issues related to poverty, as this Article explains. Nevertheless, their insights are helpful in thinking about …

Principles Of Non-Arbitrariness: Lawlessness In The Administration Of Welfare, Christine N. Cimini

Articles

This article explores whether there exists a concept of non-arbitrariness that imposes limitations on the administration of welfare benefits without rules, regulations, policies or procedures. To address this question, the article examines the concept of non-arbitrariness within various jurisprudential doctrines and the potential applicability of the concept to limit arbitrary governmental action in the welfare context. In each of the areas where courts regulate arbitrary governmental action, underlying judicial concerns give rise to jurisprudential principles. Four principles stand out. First, at a minimum, there must be a rational relationship between the government’s ends and the means it chooses to reach …

The New Privacy, Paul M. Schwartz, William M. Treanor

Michigan Law Review

In 1964, as the welfare state emerged in full force in the United States, Charles Reich published The New Property, one of the most influential articles ever to appear in a law review. Reich argued that in order to protect individual autonomy in an "age of governmental largess," a new property right in governmental benefits had to be recognized. He called this form of property the "new property." In retrospect, Reich, rather than anticipating trends, was swimming against the tide of history. In the past forty years, formal claims to government benefits have become more tenuous rather than more secure. …