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Legal Aid and Social Policy: Managing a Political Economy of Scarcity

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  • Jamila Michener

Abstract

Civil legal systems structure Americans’ relationship to the welfare state, offering grounds for contesting denials of benefits and preventing material harms like eviction. I draw on data from interviews with legal aid providers and tenant organizers to show how civil legal resources facilitate access to the safety net, and I argue that yoking legal aid and social policy is a strategy for managing a political economy that systematically undersupplies essential resources and protections. Notwithstanding the democratic ideal of social and civil rights as self-reinforcing and mutually constitutive, the relationship between social policy and civil legal aid underscores how these domains operate as substitutes rather than complements. Politically induced scarcity makes it necessary to leverage legal mechanisms to protect vulnerable Americans. Such necessity implicates acute democratic deficits that are most aptly addressed through fundamental changes to existing power relations.

Suggested Citation

  • Jamila Michener, 2023. "Legal Aid and Social Policy: Managing a Political Economy of Scarcity," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 706(1), pages 137-158, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:706:y:2023:i:1:p:137-158
    DOI: 10.1177/00027162231200118
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Hacker, Jacob S., 2004. "Privatizing Risk without Privatizing the Welfare State: The Hidden Politics of Social Policy Retrenchment in the United States," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 98(2), pages 243-260, May.
    2. Posner, Eric A, 1995. "Contract Law in the Welfare State: A Defense of the Unconscionablility Doctrine, Usury Laws, and Related Limitations on the Freedom to Contract," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(2), pages 283-319, June.
    3. David Brady & Ryan Finnigan & Sabine H bgen, 2017. "Rethinking the risks of poverty: a framework for analyzing prevalences and penalties," LIS Working papers 693, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    4. Rodney Ramcharan, 2010. "Inequality and Redistribution: Evidence from U.S. Counties and States, 1890-1930," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(4), pages 729-744, November.
    5. Nathan J. Kelly, 2005. "Political Choice, Public Policy, and Distributional Outcomes," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(4), pages 865-880, October.
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    Cited by:

    1. Pamela Herd & Donald Moynihan, 2023. "Fewer Burdens but Greater Inequality? Reevaluating the Safety Net through the Lens of Administrative Burden," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 706(1), pages 94-117, March.

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