LAWS 770 - Poverty Law & Policy

The course will examine how law has defined poverty and will assess the adequacy of that definition when measured against the experience of low income people. Throughout the course, we will pay special attention to how living in poverty affects children's well-being and development and how those effects should be redressed. In addition to considering the treatment of poverty as a constitutional category, we will survey the legal landscape of specific policy sectors: income support, housing, health care, education, and criminal justice.  We will also scrutinize governmental and business practices that victimize and exploit low income people and investigate how such practices can be subjected to legal challenge and legislative or regulatory correction. The course will interrogate how political and ideological forces have shaped the law's understanding of poverty and will conclude by exploring anti­ poverty activism, particularly the efforts of the poor themselves, and the law reform initiatives associated with such campaigns.