Linking critical legal thinking to constitutional scholarship and a practical tradition of US lawyering that is orientated around anti-poverty activism, this book offers an original, revisionist account of contemporary jurisprudence, legal theory and legal activism. The book argues that we need to think in terms of a much broader inheritance for critical legal thinking that derives from the social ethics of the progressive era, new left understandings of "creative democracy" and radical theology. To this end, it puts jurisprudence and legal theory in touch with recent scholarship on the American left and, indeed, with attempts to recover the legacies of progressive era thinking, the civil rights struggle and the Great Society. Focusing on the theory and practice of poverty law in the period stretching from the mid-1960s to the present day, the book argues that at the heart of both critical and liberal thinking is an understanding of the lawyer as an ethical actor: inspired by faith or politics to appreciate the potential and limits of law in the struggle against economic inequality.

Poverty Law, Policy, and Practice is organized around an overview and history of federal policies, significant poverty law cases, and major government antipoverty programs—welfare, housing, health, legal aid, etc.--which map onto important theoretical, doctrinal, policy, and practice questions. The book includes academic debates about the nature and causes of poverty as well as various texts that help illuminate the struggles faced by poor people. Throughout, it contains reading selections highlighting different perspectives on whether poverty is primarily caused by individual actions, structural constraints, or a mix of both. Readers will come away from the book with both a sense of the legal and policy challenges that confront antipoverty efforts, and with an understanding of the trade-offs inherent in different government approaches to dealing with poverty. New to the Second Edition: Updated coverage of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) Updated coverage of criminalization of poverty and efforts to decriminalize poverty Additional content for every chapter, with an emphasis on new cases, data, and sources Professors and students will benefit from: Three beginning chapters of general background on poverty numbers (data), social welfare (policy) and constitutional law (doctrine), followed by substantive chapters that can be selected based on professor interest, which makes the book easy to use even for 2-credit classes Emerging topics at the intersection of criminal law and poverty, markets and poverty, and human rights and poverty, in addition to traditional poverty law topics An author team with a combined experience of more than 100 years of teaching and practicing poverty law Highlights throughout the text to the racial and gendered history and nature of poverty in America An emphasis on presenting the most important topics accessibly, with careful editing and selection of excerpts to make the most of student and professor time A mix in every chapter of theory, program details, advocacy strategies, and the experiences of poor people

Focusing on the Supreme Court as an integral part of the policy-making process, Susan Lawrence examines how a change in who has access to the Court, and the nature of the institutions that structure that access, has affected its agenda setting and doctrinal development. In her analysis of cases sponsored by the Legal Services Program (LSP) before the Supreme Court during the 1966 through 1974 terms, she explores the effect of this agency in creating a voice for the poor in the judicial policy-making process. The Court's response to cases presented by the LSP--as exemplified in its decisions to invalidate residency requirements for welfare recipients (Shapiro v. Thompson, 1969) but uphold maximum family grants (Dandridge v. Williams, 1970)--is described as emerging from a timely combination of new litigant claims, available legal bases, and judicial values and role conceptions, all of which were shaped by the political climate of the era. Lawrence convincingly argues that litigation before the Court is a powerful method of political participation for the disadvantaged. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.