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What Rights (If Any) Do Children Have?

Harry Brighouse

in The Moral and Political Status of Children

According to the interest theory of rights, the primary function of rights is the protection of fundamental interests. Since children undeniably have fundamental interests that merit protection, it ... More

According to the interest theory of rights, the primary function of rights is the protection of fundamental interests. Since children undeniably have fundamental interests that merit protection, it is perfectly sensible to attribute rights, especially welfare rights, to them. The interest theory need not be hostile to the accommodation of rights that protect agency because, at least in the case of adults, there is a strong connection between the protection of agency and the promotion of welfare. Children have welfare rights similar to those of adults. But children lack the agency rights adults have because children initially lack and only gradually develop the kinds of capacities for agency that are necessary for agency rights. Children's rights to culture, religion, and free expression are ill‐conceived.Less

Welfare

James Griffin

in On Human Rights

This chapter discusses welfare rights. Topics covered include the historical growth of rights, welfare as a civil or human right, the case for a human right to welfare; and human rights, legal ... More

This chapter discusses welfare rights. Topics covered include the historical growth of rights, welfare as a civil or human right, the case for a human right to welfare; and human rights, legal rights, and rights in the United Nations.Less

From Equality to the Right to Welfare

Amir Paz-Fuchs

in Welfare to Work: Conditional Rights in Social Policy

This chapter addresses the philosophical and legal tension between two concepts: reciprocity and equality. Reciprocity governs the approach behind welfare-to-work programmes, from the political ... More

This chapter addresses the philosophical and legal tension between two concepts: reciprocity and equality. Reciprocity governs the approach behind welfare-to-work programmes, from the political philosophy to the practical interactions between government agencies and welfare claimants. It is often seen to support a conception of fairness that places government duties as contingent upon the fulfillment of personal obligations. In contrast, egalitarians are perceived as emphasizing society's duties which are justifiable notwithstanding the individual's failure to take responsibility for her own life choices. This chapter argues that egalitarianism is often seen as opposed to reciprocity because of the different attitude that each expresses towards the idea of personal responsibility. It outlines contemporary efforts to reconcile reciprocity, equality, and personal responsibility, and finds them wanting. It then suggests a different model than the one offered by contemporary egalitarian writers; one, it is argued, that fulfills their objectives better than their own proposals.Less

Socio-economic Rights and Positive Duties

Sandra Fredman

in Human Rights Transformed: Positive Rights and Positive Duties

This chapter applies the approach developed in this book to familiar topics of socio-economic rights, focussing on housing, education, and welfare, and drawing on comparative experience in selected ... More

This chapter applies the approach developed in this book to familiar topics of socio-economic rights, focussing on housing, education, and welfare, and drawing on comparative experience in selected jurisdictions. In each case, it considers how the infusion of values of positive freedom, solidarity, and equality opens up the possibility of recognizing positive duties even in relation to civil and political rights. The interaction between positive and negative duties is then considered: for example, the duty not to evict unlawfully is closely related to a duty to provide housing in the context of severe housing shortages, as in South Africa or India. The chapter then examines how the content of the positive duty can be ascertained; and the role of the minimum core. The role of courts in insisting on accountability, equality of participation and enhanced deliberative democracy is then evaluated. Finally, non-judicial compliance mechanisms are considered.Less

Caring for the Great Society

Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein

in Caring for America: Home Health Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State

This chapter shows that amid the aspirations of the Great Society, the expectation that non-elderly welfare recipients should seek wage work became hitched to the demands of older Americans for care. ... More

This chapter shows that amid the aspirations of the Great Society, the expectation that non-elderly welfare recipients should seek wage work became hitched to the demands of older Americans for care. Home care became a jobs program on the cheap. Senior activists won the Older Americans Act and Medicare. But rather than a middle-class entitlement, long-term care became more tightly identified with welfare when Medicaid turned into the chief means to obtain such services. Through manpower training and “New Careers,” the War on Poverty made AFDC recipients into home aides: poor mothers could become rehabilitated by caring for other poor, dependent, or incapacitated people. But civil rights, seniors, public sector unions, and welfare rights activists challenged the state over the nature and extent of social assistance. Their struggles would reshape home care again, this time through confrontations between state governors and county welfare offices; public sector unions and government employers; welfare mothers and mayors. This history illuminates the shift in the aim of the welfare state from providing security to the ending of dependency.Less

Welfare, Work and Social Inclusion

Amir Paz-Fuchs

in Welfare to Work: Conditional Rights in Social Policy

This chapter introduces the significant potential that social inclusion discourse holds for the analysis of welfare-to-work programmes. The roots of social inclusion discourse include a serious ... More

This chapter introduces the significant potential that social inclusion discourse holds for the analysis of welfare-to-work programmes. The roots of social inclusion discourse include a serious regard for equality as well as for personal choice, and express the fluidity and flexibility that takes into account agency as well as structure. This explains why social inclusion is mentioned as a central motivation for welfare-to-work programmes. The problem with the move from the promise of social inclusion policies to the practice of welfare-to-work programmes is the quick analogy made between labour market inclusion and social inclusion. Coercive inclusion into the workforce may result not only in social exclusion, but even in exclusion within the labour market. But understood properly, social inclusion manifests the practical meaning of the imperative that requires treating every person with equal concern and respect and ties together the issues that were discussed throughout this book.Less

Introduction

Amir Paz-Fuchs

in Welfare to Work: Conditional Rights in Social Policy

This introductory chapter sets out the structure of the book and provides summaries for each of the following chapters.

Conclusion

Amir Paz-Fuchs

in Welfare to Work: Conditional Rights in Social Policy

A vast terrain lies between basic, unconditional income policy and some of the conditions incorporated in modern welfare-to-work programmes. The purpose of this book is to assess the fairness of ... More

A vast terrain lies between basic, unconditional income policy and some of the conditions incorporated in modern welfare-to-work programmes. The purpose of this book is to assess the fairness of these conditions in light of background justifications, and to question whether the results of a policy that advances such conditions will be equitable. The book concludes by showing that rather than undermining social inclusion and labour market integration, strengthening welfare rights and relaxing preconditions on entitlement would serve the very objectives that welfare-to-work programmes are supposed to advance.Less

Constitutional Law Meets Comparative Politics: Socio-economic Rights and Political Realities

Evan Rosevear and Ran Hirschl

in The Legal Protection of Human Rights: Sceptical Essays

This chapter presents comparative evidence of the lack of correlation between variations in court-based human rights protection for social welfare rights and the reality of welfare provisions in ... More

This chapter presents comparative evidence of the lack of correlation between variations in court-based human rights protection for social welfare rights and the reality of welfare provisions in different countries. The extensive research done on the empirical relation between levels of welfare provision and various non-judicial factors is brought to bear on assessing the relationship between constitutional rights and their impact on inequality. The chapter examines the causal links between constitutional protection and the political salience of socio-economic inequality, poverty, and/or labour unions and other leftists forces and constituencies in a given polity; regional and international political economy factors that explain the expansion or shrinkage of public economy; the political context for ‘aspirational’ statements at the time of constitutionalization; levels of extra-constitutional commitment to, and existence of, a well developed welfare regime (Keynesian, Marxist-socialist, or otherwise) in that polity; attempts by courts to expand the ambit of their influence by acting when elected official will not; and the net effect of constitutionalization or of its prevalent modes of interpretation on the actual realization of welfare rights.Less

Enough for the Future

Lukas H. Meyer and Dominic Roser

in Intergenerational Justice

Reflecting the normative significance of specific features of intergenerational relations this chapter investigates the justice claims of future people vis-à-vis currently living people. It discusses ... More

Reflecting the normative significance of specific features of intergenerational relations this chapter investigates the justice claims of future people vis-à-vis currently living people. It discusses sufficientarian and egalitarian conceptions of justice, and argues that a sufficientarian approach is appropriate in the intergenerational context. This conclusion is based, first, on the argument that by relying on a threshold conception of harm we can solve the non-identity problem and that there are good reasons to specify the relevant threshold in sufficientarian terms. Second, it is based upon an examination of reasons given for a sufficientarian understanding of global justice. These reasons are shown to speak even more strongly for a sufficientarian understanding of intergenerational justice.Less

The Pauper

Sylvie Laurent

in King and the Other America: The Poor People's Campaign and the Quest for Economic Equality

This chapter questions the implications of King’s new class-based coalition. It casts the Poor People’s Campaign as a crucial hinge in creating a possible link between the civil rights movement, the ... More

This chapter questions the implications of King’s new class-based coalition. It casts the Poor People’s Campaign as a crucial hinge in creating a possible link between the civil rights movement, the labor movement, black nationalists who endorsed Marxism, the Chicano movements, the Welfare Rights movements (in which women played a critical role), poor whites organizations and the peace movement.Less

The Egalitarian Principle of Fundamental Justice

ALAN BRUDNER

in Constitutional Goods

This chapter discusses the conception of public reason underlying the egalitarian constitutional paradigm. That conception is mutual concern by all citizens for their success in leading lives of ... More

This chapter discusses the conception of public reason underlying the egalitarian constitutional paradigm. That conception is mutual concern by all citizens for their success in leading lives of self-authorship and self-rule. It explains the ephemeral features of this paradigm (its militancy against nature, its content-neutrality, its exclusion of particular interests from the public sphere) as overreactions to the downfall of the pre-modern and libertarian constitutions. It also explains how egalitarian public reason generates the durable idea of freedom-based goods capable of overriding liberty rights as well as a duty to entrench the common-law constitution in a written supreme law interpreted by a judiciary. Finally, the chapter argues for the justiciability of welfare rights.Less

The Triumph of Self-Interest

Evan Tsen Lee

in Judicial Restraint in America: How the Ageless Wisdom of the Federal Courts was Invented

This chapter details how William Brennan, from the time of the decisions in Camp and Barlow in 1970 until his retirement in 1990, lost the vast majority of battles he fought in the standing and other ... More

This chapter details how William Brennan, from the time of the decisions in Camp and Barlow in 1970 until his retirement in 1990, lost the vast majority of battles he fought in the standing and other justiciability cases. The subject matter of those cases ranged from the environment, through welfare rights and the legality of the Vietnam War, to discriminatory police practices and affirmative action in higher education. The tables began to turn on Brennan in Sierra Club v. Morton, a 1972 case involving proposed development in the Mineral King Valley, nestled in the Sierra Nevadas on the California side.Less

Reconstructing Social Ills: From the Perils of Poverty to Welfare Dependency

Kaaryn S. Gustafson

in Cheating Welfare: Public Assistance and the Criminalization of Poverty

This chapter traces the history of welfare policies and welfare politics in the United States, with particular emphasis on the genealogy of the complex, sometimes contradictory, and increasingly ... More

This chapter traces the history of welfare policies and welfare politics in the United States, with particular emphasis on the genealogy of the complex, sometimes contradictory, and increasingly punitive welfare rules and regulations. It begins with an overview of how welfare made the transition from charitable aid to government-sponsored relief before turning to the Social Security Act of 1935 and its early years. It then considers the growth of aid to dependent children before discussing the War on Poverty mobilized by the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson. It also examines the rise of the welfare rights movement and its effects on the welfare system, along with the increase in concerns about welfare cheating and the emergence of the symbol of the welfare queen under the Reagan administration, Finally, it explores welfare reform and the convergence of the welfare and criminal justice systems during the 1990s.Less

. Rebuilding the Welfare State: Forging a New Deal for Working Families

Ellen Reese

in Backlash against Welfare Mothers: Past and Present

This chapter addresses future prospects for improving poor mothers’ welfare rights. It argues that to counter the current backlash against welfare mothers, politicians and activists need to offer a ... More

This chapter addresses future prospects for improving poor mothers’ welfare rights. It argues that to counter the current backlash against welfare mothers, politicians and activists need to offer a bold alternative to the current welfare system that will help build solidarity rather than divisions among working-class families. Rising criticism of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) in the 1960s and 1970s led to national proposals to replace it with a guaranteed annual income program that would have served both the working poor and the unemployed. The triumph of welfare cutbacks cannot simply be understood in terms of class politics, the rise of neoliberalism, and shifts in the global economy. The New Deal for Working Families would provide paid family leave and expand subsidized child care. Enacting a New Deal for Working Families would require building a strong movement and reframing debates about values, taxes, welfare, and spending.Less

The Shape of a Right to Education

Anne Newman

in Realizing Educational Rights: Advancing School Reform through Courts and Communities

This chapter addresses the question: If we should treat education as a preconditional right to enable fair deliberative decision-making, what should this right include? Rights claims have become ... More

This chapter addresses the question: If we should treat education as a preconditional right to enable fair deliberative decision-making, what should this right include? Rights claims have become ubiquitous in education reform discourse, but little work to date has focused a philosophical lens on the substantive argument for a right to education, its democratic implications, and what this entitlement should include. This chapter begins with a brief overview of rights theory to call attention to how education is sidelined in existing accounts of welfare rights, and argues why it merits a place alongside the other social goods covered by this literature. The chapter next defends the deliberative view of citizenship as the proper framework in which to situate educational rights, and then turns to its educational demands. The general contours of this right are outlined by focusing on the civic skills associated with meaningfully exercising free speech and voting rights, which illustrate the conditions that facilitate equal citizenship. The chapter focuses in particular on the development of citizens’ cognitive autonomy and ability to use public reason as central to the meaningful exercise of political liberties.Less