Legal Accountability in the Service-Based Welfare State: Lessons from Child Welfare Reform

Authors

Kathleen G. Noonan, University of PennsylvaniaFollow
Charles F. Sabel, Columbia Law SchoolFollow
William H. Simon, Columbia Law SchoolFollow

Document Type

Working Paper

Publication Date

2008

Abstract

Current trends intensify the longstanding problem of how the rule-of-law should be institutionalized in the welfare state. Welfare programs are being re-designed to increase their capacities to adapt to rapidly changing conditions and to tailor their responses to diverse clienteles. These developments challenge the understanding of legal accountability developed in the Warren Court era. This Article reports on an emerging model of accountable administration that strives to reconcile programmatic flexibility with rule-of-law values. The model has been developed in the reform of state child protective services systems, but it has potentially broad application to public law. It also has novel implications for such basic rule-of-law issues as the choice between rules and standards, the relation of bureaucratic and judicial control, the proper scope of judicial intervention into dysfunctional public agencies, and the justiciability of "positive" (or social and economic) rights.

Disciplines

Family Law | Law | Public Law and Legal Theory | Rule of Law

Comments

Formerly titled: The Rule of Law in the Experimentalist Welfare State: Lessons from Child Welfare Reform.

Recommended Citation

Kathleen G. Noonan, Charles F. Sabel & William H. Simon, Legal Accountability in the Service-Based Welfare State: Lessons from Child Welfare Reform, Law of Social Inquiry, Vol. 34, p. 523, 2009; Columbia Public Law Research Paper No. 08-162 (2008).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/1510