In Supreme Judgment of the Poor: The Role of the United States Supreme Court in Welfare Law and Policy

39 Pages Posted: 21 Dec 2011 Last revised: 28 Dec 2011

See all articles by Bridgette Baldwin

Bridgette Baldwin

Western New England University School of Law

Date Written: December 20, 2011

Abstract

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 from “cooperative federalism,” (expanding powers of the national government in areas traditionally left to the states) to fiscal conservatism (privileging state power and proffering a hands-off approach). These conceptual rubrics do not follow a linear narrative nor offer a story of change over time; instead they are competing approaches that can be implemented by the Supreme Court simultaneously. While the historical arch from the Civil Rights Era to the present normally presents a story of expanded liberties and freedoms to the socially disenfranchised, the lens of the Supreme Court welfare decisions narrates a much different story. Instead, we see the devolution of racial liberalism, the intensification and expansion of poverty, and the rise of social conservatism so familiar by the mid-1980s. Here, black women became both the symbolic scapegoat and the site of social policy surveillance. At the apex of this symbolic/social policy convergence were national attacks on the stereotyped “welfare queen” in particular, and any redistribution of national resources to the poor, in general. Part I of this paper examines Supreme Court case law on welfare policy through the lens of the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. Part II surveys the Supreme Court case law on welfare policy through the lens of federalism. Finally, Part III reviews much of the same case law contrasted through the lens of fiscal conservatism. Through these lenses, it is clear that the seemingly value-neutral Supreme Court as not at all immune to the changing political landscape of the nation over the last forty years.

Keywords: welfare, welfare reform, AFDC, social welfare law, women

Suggested Citation

Baldwin, Bridgette, In Supreme Judgment of the Poor: The Role of the United States Supreme Court in Welfare Law and Policy (December 20, 2011). Wisconsin Women's Law Journal, Vol. 23, p. 1, 2008, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1974940

Bridgette Baldwin (Contact Author)

Western New England University School of Law ( email )

1215 Wilbraham Road
Springfield, MA 01119
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
102
Abstract Views
793
Rank
473,049
PlumX Metrics