Getting By

Lei Zhang, Law Library Journal Getting By would be particularly useful for legal aid organizations, law firms advocating for low-income individuals (pro bono or otherwise), public law libraries, law school libraries, and anyone interested in helping or learning more about services for economically disadvantaged people. It is recommended as a worthwhile acquisition.


Frances Fox Piven, co-author of Regulating the Poor and Poor People's Movements Legal rights only become actual when people can understand them and act to defend them. To that end, this book is an admirably lucid tool to make the legal rights of the American poor real. More than that, Hershkoff and Loffredo show that the rights of the poor also shore up the rights of workers, and this understanding is fundamental and essential to the pursuit of class justice in the United States.


David Garland, author of The Welfare State: A Very Short Introduction Getting By is an essential, go-to guide for the millions of low-income Americans struggling to understand their social and economic rights and how to access them. Lucid and reader-friendly but also precise and comprehensive, this marvelous book will be a vital resource for claimants negotiating the maze of federal programs and for advocates seeking to mobilize for much-needed legal reform.


Martha Davis, author of Brutal Need: Lawyers and the Welfare Rights Movement and co-author of Human Rights Advocacy in the United States Knowledge is power. This is the book that we need now to understand the economic rights that are still available to low income people in the U.S., as well as the frayed edges and gaping holes in the safety net. There are no better guides to the U.S. economic rights landscape than Hershkoff and Loffredo. Comprehensive, thoughtfully organized, and with lucid explanations of complex legal provisions, even experts will have something to learn from this volume. This
should be a standard resource for anyone who engages with these issues, but this book will not stay on the shelf - you'll be reaching for it again and again to help you navigate, repair, and ultimately expand this vital system of fundamental rights.


Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights This book combines extremely useful guidance for low-income persons and their advocates through the labyrinth of the U.S. legal and welfare systems, with an exceptionally comprehensive and insightful overview of how key parts of those systems work and don't work. An invaluable resource.


Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director, ACLU At a time when economic inequality is threatening civil liberties, every policy maker, elected official, and journalist - indeed, anyone concerned about the future of the country - ought to know about the problems highlighted in this book and aim to achieve needed reforms.


Adriene Holder, Attorney-in-Charge, The Legal Aid Society, Civil Practice An important work ...

Helen Hershkoff is the Herbert M. and Svetlana Wachtell Professor of Constitutional Law and Civil Liberties at New York University School of Law. Stephen Loffredo is Professor of Law at the City University of New York School of Law.

Introduction Chapter 1. Cash Assistance Chapter 2. Work-Related Benefits and Employment Protections Chapter 3. Food Assistance Chapter 4. Health Chapter 5. Education Chapter 6. Consumer Rights and Credit Protection Chapter 7. Housing Chapter 8. Rights in Public Spaces Chapter 9. Access to Justice: Enforcing Rights and Securing Protection Chapter 10. The Right to Vote Index