1999 November - December

Community economic development work is rooted in the belief that poor people can seize control of their own social and economic agenda. Integrating this work into a program's advocacy approach involves a departure from traditional, litigation-oriented poverty law practice, and this presents various challenges.

Even though Earned Income Tax Credit benefits—a principal antipoverty program—have expanded during the 1990s, a startling number of eligible individuals do not receive them.

Services available through state vocational rehabilitation systems are often critical to people with disabilities as they prepare to enter the work force. A review of vocational rehabilitation eligibility criteria, specific goods and services that may be provided, issues to keep in mind when using the vocational rehabilitation system to obtain assistive technology, appeal procedures, as well as available advocacy services, shows how critical they can be.

Even in this age of "devolution" and "privatization," Section 1983 can be applied to protect low-income clients from the deprivation of their federal rights. This examination of the U.S. Supreme Court decisions construing 42 U.S.C. § 1983 discusses claims brought under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, procedural issues in bringing a Section 1983 claim, and available remedies and defenses.

The Supreme Court this past term expanded upon previous decisions protecting states from suit without consent and leaped once again into the morass of "state action" law. Other cases examined by the Federal Court Access Group explore some of the Court's procedural decisions pertaining to due process, deference, removal, class certification, and the collateral-order doctrine.

Is the Supreme Court's ruling in Saenz v. Roe a nod to 30 years of right-to-travel precedent or a clarion call to begin a new era of litigation based on the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the U.S. Constitution? Saenz moves the analysis of the right to travel to a new stage by pointing to a potential new source for asserting the rights of the poor—rights that might be protected by heightened judicial scrutiny.