Martha F. Davis – författare

During the 1960s a new breed of "poverty lawyers"—in collaboration with welfare recipient activists—mounted a legal campaign to create a constitutional right to welfare. The collaboration worked significant changes in the social welfare system of the United States and in the scope of individual constitutional rights. In this book, Martha F. Davis tells the behind-the-scenes story of the strategies, successes, failures, and frustrations of that important campaign.Drawing on interviews with many of the people who participated in the welfare rights movement, as well as on original sources, Davis traces the historical and philosophical connections among welfare rights lawyers, the settlement house movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the civil rights movement, and she shows how the legal campaign for the poor followed and built on the litigation strategies developed by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund's earlier effort to desegregate the public schools. She outlines the creation of welfare law in the 1960s and provides the first detailed account of the strategy to use law as a mechanism for organizing and expanding the rights of welfare recipients. She vividly describes seminal cases and individual lawyers and activists, including Edward Sparer, the lawyer acknowledged as the father of welfare law; George Wiley, founder of the National Welfare Rights Organization; and Charles Reich, whose theories were crucial to the formulation of the plaintiffs' position in Goldberg v. Kelly, the landmark case that argued that welfare benefits were protected by the due process clause and should not be terminated without a hearing. Even though 1960s welfare rights litigation was ultimately unsuccessful in broadly reforming the welfare system, Davis shows the important role legal strategies and lawyers themselves have played in this social movement of the poor.

This three-volume set chronicles the history of human rights in the United States from the perspective of domestic social justice activism. First, the set examines the political forces and historic events that resulted in the U.S.'s failure to embrace human rights principles at home while actively (albeit selectively) championing and promoting human rights abroad. It then considers the current explosion of human rights activism around issues within the United States and the way human rights is transforming domestic social justice work.The first volume provides a historical perspective on the United States' ambivalent relationship with the international human rights movement. It examines the implications of recognizing domestic rights violations as a matter of international concern and the relationship between international and domestic law. It also addresses the role the Cold War and Southern opposition to international scrutiny of its Jim Crow policies and segregation played in shaping U.S. attitudes toward human rights generally and social and economic rights in particular. These factors forced social justice organizations to largely abandon employing a human rights framework in their domestic work and had a lasting impact on U.S. perspectives about fundamental rights and the role of government. The set also chronicles current domestic human rights work. Volumes two and three consider why domestic activists currently are using human rights and the tactical advantages and practical challenges posed by such strategies. These volumes cover everything from globalization to terrorism and the erosion of civil rights protections that led to a renewed interest in human rights; human rights versus civil rights strategies; and the different ways human rights can support social activism.

This timely collection brings together original explorations of the COVID-19 pandemic and its wide-ranging, global effects on human rights.The contributors argue that a human rights perspective is necessary to understand the pervasive consequences of the crisis, while focusing attention on those being left behind and providing a necessary framework for the effort to 'build back better'. Expert contributors to this volume address interconnections between the COVID-19 crisis and human rights to equality and non-discrimination, including historical responses to pandemics, populism and authoritarianism, and the rights to health, information, water and the environment. Highlighting the dangerous potential for derogations from human rights, authors further scrutinize the human rights compliance of new legislation and policies in relation to issues such as privacy, protection of persons with disabilities, freedom of expression, and access to medicines. Acknowledging the pandemic as a defining moment for human rights, the volume proposes a post-crisis human rights agenda to engage civil society and government at all levels in concrete measures to roll back increasing inequality.With rich examples, new thinking, and provocative analyses of human rights, COVID-19, pandemics, crises, and inequality, this book will be of key interest to scholars, students, and practitioners in all areas of human rights, global governance, and public health, as well as others who are ready to embark on an exploration of these complex challenges.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

This timely collection brings together original explorations of the COVID-19 pandemic and its wide-ranging, global effects on human rights.The contributors argue that a human rights perspective is necessary to understand the pervasive consequences of the crisis, while focusing attention on those being left behind and providing a necessary framework for the effort to 'build back better'. Expert contributors to this volume address interconnections between the COVID-19 crisis and human rights to equality and non-discrimination, including historical responses to pandemics, populism and authoritarianism, and the rights to health, information, water and the environment. Highlighting the dangerous potential for derogations from human rights, authors further scrutinize the human rights compliance of new legislation and policies in relation to issues such as privacy, protection of persons with disabilities, freedom of expression, and access to medicines. Acknowledging the pandemic as a defining moment for human rights, the volume proposes a post-crisis human rights agenda to engage civil society and government at all levels in concrete measures to roll back increasing inequality.With rich examples, new thinking, and provocative analyses of human rights, COVID-19, pandemics, crises, and inequality, this book will be of key interest to scholars, students, and practitioners in all areas of human rights, global governance, and public health, as well as others who are ready to embark on an exploration of these complex challenges.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

Throughout its history, America's policies have alternatively embraced human rights, regarded them with ambivalence, or rejected them out of hand. The essays in Bringing Human Rights Home: A History of Human Rights in the United States put these shifting political winds into a larger historical perspective, from the country's very beginnings to the present day.The contributing writers examine the global influences on early American attitudes toward human rights and, reviewing the twentieth century, note the high-water mark of human rights acceptance during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency. They examine the domestic tensions between civil and political rights on the one hand, and economic, social, and cultural rights on the other. Taking the long view, many of the contributors emphasize the role played by social movements and grassroots activists in pressing a human rights agenda from the bottom up.The essays examine the centrality of human rights in the early and mid-twentieth-century civil rights movement, the breadth of subnational human rights activism in the face of federal inaction on a range of human rights issues, and the ways both post-9/11 developments and government responses to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina spurred grassroots activism in the United States. Several essays explore in depth the emergence of new advocacy strategies, both in the context of litigating for civil and political rights and through the lens of particular economic rights sectors, such as labor. Though the setbacks for human rights have been many, Bringing Human Rights Home demonstrates the strength and resilience of the U.S. human rights movement and offers hope for its future.

This book examines the understudied area of subnational human rights and the human rights economy.Against the context of increasing economic and political power of local level governments – both cities and subnational regions – this interdisciplinary volume provides a crucial examination of economic policies that are grounded in human rights principles and obligations while being implemented in the places people live. Policies which promote economic justice and prosperity present many opportunities and challenges, and this book proposes ways in which local economic policies can respect, protect, and fulfil human rights, with positive multiplier effects at the national and global levels.This book will be of keen interest to scholars, students, and practitioners in human rights, economics, law, development, and urban studies; as well as professionals and policymakers involved in local economic development planning and the implementation of human rights norms.

This important Research Handbook explores the nexus between human rights, poverty and inequality as a critical lens for understanding and addressing key challenges of the coming decades, including the objectives set out in the Sustainable Development Goals. The Research Handbook starts from the premise that poverty is not solely an issue of minimum income and explores the profound ways that deprivation and distributive inequality of power and capability relate to economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights.Leading experts in the human rights field representing a range of disciplines outline a future research agenda to address poverty and inequality head on. Beginning with an interrogation of the definition of poverty, subsequent chapters analyse the dynamics of poverty and inequality in relation to matters such as race, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, geography and migration status. The rights to housing, land, health, work, education, protest and access to justice are also explored, with a recognition of the challenges posed by corruption, climate change and new technologies.The Research Handbook on Human Rights and Poverty is an essential reference guide for those who teach in these areas and for scholars and students developing future research agendas of their own. This will also be a much-needed resource for people working practically to address poverty in both the Global North and Global South.

This book examines the understudied area of subnational human rights and the human rights economy.Against the context of increasing economic and political power of local level governments - both cities and subnational regions - this interdisciplinary volume provides a crucial examination of economic policies that are grounded in human rights principles and obligations while being implemented in the places people live. Policies which promote economic justice and prosperity present many opportunities and challenges, and this book proposes ways in which local economic policies can respect, protect, and fulfil human rights, with positive multiplier effects at the national and global levels.This book will be of keen interest to scholars, students, and practitioners in human rights, economics, law, development, and urban studies; as well as professionals and policymakers involved in local economic development planning and the implementation of human rights norms.

This book examines the understudied area of subnational human rights and the human rights economy.Against the context of increasing economic and political power of local level governments - both cities and subnational regions - this interdisciplinary volume provides a crucial examination of economic policies that are grounded in human rights principles and obligations while being implemented in the places people live. Policies which promote economic justice and prosperity present many opportunities and challenges, and this book proposes ways in which local economic policies can respect, protect, and fulfil human rights, with positive multiplier effects at the national and global levels.This book will be of keen interest to scholars, students, and practitioners in human rights, economics, law, development, and urban studies; as well as professionals and policymakers involved in local economic development planning and the implementation of human rights norms.

Cities increasingly base their local policies on human rights. Human rights cities promise to forge new alliances between urban actors and international organizations, to enable the 'translation' of the abstract language of human rights to the local level, and to develop new practices designed to bring about global urban justice. This book brings together academics and practitioners at the forefront of human rights cities and the 'right to the city' movement to critically discuss their history and also the potential that human rights cities hold for global urban justice.

This important Research Handbook explores the nexus between human rights, poverty and inequality as a critical lens for understanding and addressing key challenges of the coming decades, including the objectives set out in the Sustainable Development Goals. The Research Handbook starts from the premise that poverty is not solely an issue of minimum income and explores the profound ways that deprivation and distributive inequality of power and capability relate to economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights.Leading experts in the human rights field representing a range of disciplines outline a future research agenda to address poverty and inequality head on. Beginning with an interrogation of the definition of poverty, subsequent chapters analyse the dynamics of poverty and inequality in relation to matters such as race, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, geography and migration status. The rights to housing, land, health, work, education, protest and access to justice are also explored, with a recognition of the challenges posed by corruption, climate change and new technologies.The Research Handbook on Human Rights and Poverty is an essential reference guide for those who teach in these areas and for scholars and students developing future research agendas of their own. This will also be a much-needed resource for people working practically to address poverty in both the Global North and Global South.