Please excuse this self-promoting post but I have two new articles posted to SSRN (one already published, the other accepted for publication) that relate to poverty law.
(1) Ezra Rosser, Poverty Offsetting, 6 Harvard Law & Policy Review 179 (2012). Abstract below:
The market now offers consumers an expanding array of options to offset the harms of their consumption. Travel websites and politicians alike sell the advantages of carbon offsetting. But offsetting options need not be limited to correcting for environmental harm; consumption is also associated with worker exploitation and people struggling with poverty. Individuals can and do respond to such poverty-related harms by altering their consumption decisions and by making voluntary supplemental payments following consumption. This Essay explores the possibility of poverty offsetting. Building upon carbon offsetting’s basic insight—that people should correct for the negative externalities of their consumption—poverty-offsetting institutions would enable individuals to correct for the poverty-related harms associated with their consumption.
(2) Ezra Rosser, The Ambition and Transformative Potential of Progressive Property, 101 California Law Review __ (forthcoming 2013). Abstract below:
The emerging progressive property school of thought champions and finds its meaning in the social nature of property. Rejecting the idea that exclusion lies at the core of property law, progressive property scholars call for a reconsideration of the relationships owners and non-owners have with property and with each other. Despite these ambitions, so far progressive property scholarship has largely confined itself to questions of exclusion and access. This paper argues that such an emphasis glosses over the race-related acquisition and distribution problems that plague American history and property law. The modest structural changes supported by progressive property scholars fail to account for this racial history and, by so doing, present a limited vision of the changes to property law that progressive scholars should support. Though sympathetic with the progressive property political and scholarly orientation and the policy arguments made regarding exclusion and access, I argue that the first priority of any transformative project of progressive property must be revisiting acquisition and distribution.
Finally, let me add a couple comments about these articles. The first article is a follow-up to my Offsetting and the Consumption of Social Responsibility, 89 Washington University Law Review 27 (2011) article and I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the staff of the Harvard Law and Policy Review for their belief in the topic and their work on the article. THANK YOU! The second article will not be published until 2013 so if you have comments on the paper, please email them to me. =)
Poverty Law 