State Prisoners, Federal Courts, and Playing By the Rules: An Analysis of the Aldisert Committee\u27s \u3cem\u3eRecommended Procedures for Handling Prisoner Civil Rights Cases\u3c/em\u3e

The Comment first will recapitulate the full range of procedural initiatives proposed by the Aldisert Committee for adoption as local court rules. Then it will analyze the Committee\u27s recommendations relating to pleading forms and screening the complaints before service of process, the critical stage at which courts dispose of most prisoner complaints. Although concluding that important aspects of the recommended procedures are fundamentally inconsistent with federal statutes and rules, this Comment acknowledges the valid concerns generating the Committee\u27s proposals, and then suggests alternative judicial actions responsive to the phenomenon of state prisoner civil rights com- plaints in federal courts

Disability and Welfare Reform: Keep the Supplemental Security Income Program but Reengineer the Disability Determination Process

The thesis of this Article is that reform of the Supplemental Security Income disability program is properly on the welfare reform agenda, but not in the terms cast by proposed legislation. Procedural reform targeting identified problems should be the first step, rather than the termination of the federal entitlement program or the re-writing of the eligibility criteria. Substantive reform should follow such procedural reform. Therefore, this Article will focus particularly on procedural reform, although it will place that discussion in the context of the current legislative climate. Part II of this Article describes the current disability determination process and why it needs to change. Part III discusses procedural reform, and in particular the major aspects of the agency\u27s Reengineering Plan and its implementation. This Part also focuses attention on aspects of the Plan that deserve special vigilance and proactive participation by those who advocate on behalf of poor and disabled people. Part IV reviews current congressional proposals to restrict the reach of the SSI program. The Article argues for rejection of these proposals, which are not responsive to the identified need for change in the system, and which would have untoward and destructive impacts on state and local governments and the people whose survival depends on these entitlements. The Article concludes that the Reengineering Plan holds promise for procedural reform of a major welfare program in ways that will be beneficial to citizens