Dependency in the Welfare State: Beyond the Due Process Vision

The due process revolution has failed. Never mind that this verdict is an oversimplified exaggeration. It is closer to the truth than its opposite. Giving powerless, dependent, poor people property interests in their welfare benefits and the right to call those who exercise discretion over them legally into account does not magically cure the poverty, powerlessness, or dependency that motivated the extension of rights in the first instance. The optimistic view of legality that motivated much of the social activism of the late sixties and early seventies inevitably gives way before the reality of being poor