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Norm Change Or Judicial Decree? the Courts, The Public, And Welfare Reform (Twenty-Seventh Annual National Federalist Society Student Symposium)

eBook details

Title: Norm Change Or Judicial Decree? the Courts, The Public, And Welfare Reform (Twenty-Seventh Annual National Federalist Society Student Symposium)
Author : Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy
Release Date : January 01, 2009
Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
Pages : * pages
Size : 318 KB

Description

The topic for this panel--the relationship between community values and judicial decision making--calls to mind Supreme Court cases on high-profile issues that have provoked strong criticism from the public. Decisions regarding church-state relations, (1) abortion, (2) free speech, (3) government regulation of property rights, (4) and affirmative action (5) are recent examples. This Essay addresses another example of tension between judicial decrees and popular attitudes. From the 1960s through the 1980s, key Supreme Court decisions addressing the administration of public welfare programs were at odds with the dominant values of much of the nation. For a number of reasons, that conflict has now largely been resolved. Therein lies a revealing story. In 1996, after decades of experimental and pilot programs, Congress enacted a massive overhaul of the federal poverty-relief scheme. As part of a comprehensive welfare reform package sponsored by the Clinton Administration, the core federal cash-aid program, Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), was repealed and replaced with a work-based assistance program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). (6) These changes coincided with a significant decline in the role of the courts in shaping policy in the welfare area. Although the federal courts considered a range of important challenges to laws and regulations governing poverty relief and economic redistribution between the 1960s and the mid-1980s, they have been relatively uninvolved since that period and have not played a major role in sorting out issues arising from the welfare reform legislation. Moreover, despite widespread attention to growing economic and social inequality, (7) there is no evidence of a significant push to reenlist courts in efforts to address these problems. A visit to informational and advocacy websites on poverty issues bears out this abandonment of judicial avenues. (8) All told, there is little reason to believe that courts will significantly shape the law and policy of poor relief in the near future.