Word: law
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...seem, the Federal Government spends considerable amounts each year financing law suits against itself. In 1966 the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) began to grant some $200,000 annually to a group of New York lawyers who had formed the Center on Social Welfare Policy and Law...
Until just a few years ago, when rising social consciousness focused attention on the inequities and inefficiencies of the welfare system, there was no such thing as welfare law. "The welfare system existed for 30 years without scrutiny or challenge," says Lee Albert, 32, the center's kinetic director...
...judges themselves are unfamiliar with the legalities of the welfare system." To Burt W. Griffin, OEO's director of legal services, the center "has helped to build the intellectual foundation for a whole new area of law -poverty law...
Spate of Rulings. The center uses tactics developed by civil rights groups. "First we find out in what areas of the law the poor are being shortchanged," says Albert. "Then we search for a plaintiff to represent." The organization has been responsible, in whole or in part, for the spate of recent Supreme Court rulings that have broadened the rights of welfare recipients. In 1966 the high court upheld a decision prohibiting Georgia from denying relief benefits to mothers whom the state deemed able to work. Other cases included a landmark decision against Alabama, which had sought to end payments...
...full-time professional staff is composed of only eight young lawyers (average age 28). All could be getting good salaries on Wall Street, but they agree with Director Albert when he says: "I wanted to do something relevant." Albert, who earns $17,000 a year, went to Yale Law School, clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron ("Whizzer") White, and taught at the London School of Economics. He now teaches a course at the Columbia Law School. Others, like Ron Pollack, a veteran of Mississippi civil rights campaigns, are paid only...