In Reciprocal Freedom, Weinrib offers a neat and powerful explanation of the relationship between private law, corrective justice, public law, and distributive justice. In the Kantian view, private law and corrective justice are conceptually prior to public law and distributive justice. The primary function of public law is to publicly determine and enforce private rights. Institutions of distributive justice are required to legitimize a system of private rights that creates the possibility of subordination. In this comment, I argue that Reciprocal Freedom is a justification for what I will call ‘orthodox private law’ that, because it neglects the place of distributive justice within private law, fails to secure genuine independence for all persons.

This article addresses a critical research gap by investigating the link between social polarization and contemporary societal challenges, such as poverty and crime. Despite the existence of numerous studies describing the effects of income disparity, the role of social stratification in inducing delinquency and poorness in transitional economies has not received sufficient consideration. The author conducts an analysis of income inequality metrics (IIMs) across Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) nations, examining dependencies that provide a precise depiction of the correlation between socioeconomic disparity and urgent society’s problems. The study disclosed that the lowest proportion of the impoverished was observed in countries with a minimal income disparity, such as Belarus and Kazakhstan; in contrast, nations that exhibit a significant degree of income differentiation, such as Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, and Armenia, demonstrate the highest proportion of the impoverished. Following a linear regression approach, the study revealed a strong positive correlation between IIMs and crime rate. By shedding light on these dependencies, the article provides fresh insights into the dynamic relationship between major social problems in the CIS countries.

Childlessness in late male adulthood is increasingly prevalent in rural China, indicating a need to understand the factors contributing to it. This group is often overlooked in gerontological and childlessness research. While existing studies have explored individual-level predictors of childlessness over the lifecourse and implications of broader societal conditions at the population level, little is known about how lifecourse and structural factors interact to shape pathways to childlessness. This study aims to investigate structural factors contributing to childlessness among older men in a rural area of northern China. It focuses on the life stories of 13 childless older men and the effects of history, timing and life-domain interdependencies, finding that some participants experienced intense disruptive life events or critical turning points – early-life care-giving responsibilities, disability or withdrawal from school – that altered their life trajectories. These events often intersected with structural factors, including unstable and low-paid employment, lack of social protection and prevailing social norms, which reinforced one another and jointly constrained prospects for marriage and parenthood. These trajectories unfolded within shifting policy contexts; institutional arrangements across different historical periods shaped and often produced disadvantages in the marriage market. This study advances theoretical understanding of the structural factors contributing to male childlessness by recognizing life trajectories, structural shifts and social relations as linked factors shaping cumulative disadvantage in union formation and childbearing. Its policy implications surround supporting individuals who intend to form families during critical life transitions and addressing the broader structural barriers that shape male childlessness in rural areas.

We examine the distributional impact of domestic carbon pricing in three Sub-Saharan African countries. We combine household expenditure surveys and sectoral carbon intensity data derived from a multi-regional input-output model for Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda. Our findings indicate that domestic carbon pricing is progressive in all three countries. This primarily results from higher budget allocations for direct energy consumption in wealthier households, especially concerning motor vehicles and electrical appliances. Disparities in welfare losses within income groups are primarily due to varying energy consumption patterns. Importantly, we identify low-income households as being disproportionately affected by carbon taxes. Lump-sum transfers could fully compensate most households in the bottom two income quintiles, significantly reducing poverty. Our comparative analysis emphasizes the importance of country-specific differences in energy expenditures and carbon intensities in shaping the distributional outcomes of carbon taxes.

The German Federal Constitutional Court has defined constitutional limits for exclusionary legislation in social law. In these judgments, the Federal Constitutional Court has used human dignity and social equality doctrines to address poverty and social exclusion based on a specific group status as constitutional issues. In doing that, the Federal Constitutional Court has developed practices of a social constitutionalism. While the reviewing power of apex courts for restrictions in classic civil liberties is generally accepted, it is more contested and less obvious for distributive welfare policies. That is why, the practices of social constitutionalism of the Federal Constitutional Court have been an important constitutional development in recent years. The case law shows that they strengthen the social rights protection of the most vulnerable groups in society: people in need and refugees.

Millions worldwide face poverty daily. While its effects vary by society, poverty consistently marginalizes individuals, limiting their opportunities and access to societal benefits. Myths about poverty undergird and perpetuate socioeconomic exclusion, being the vehicles for cultural processes, such as stigmatization, racialization, and rationalization. These myths abound in law. They include the conception of poverty as solely concerned with the deprivation of basic material goods; equal opportunities and collective amnesia about the past; stigmatization of people in poverty as irresponsible and lazy; the categorization of aspects and elements of their poverty condition as criminal. This Article argues that judges, as (meta)narrators, have the power to challenge myths and develop new narratives about poverty, through the language of non-discrimination and equality. This could open the way to judicially redress certain troubling situations of misrecognition, social exclusion and inequality. Ultimately, as long as myths about poverty prevail in law any attempt to tackle the issue of socioeconomic exclusion is destined to fail. This article contributes to the law and sociology literature on poverty in judgecraft by addressing the research gap on narratives of poverty within judicial reasoning and practice.

Researchers and policymakers propose a job guarantee as a means of overcoming long-term unemployment and the associated risk of social exclusion. Such a programme implies that all long-term-unemployed individuals within a certain territory are offered subsidised employment in not-for-profit enterprises or the public sector. This results in heterogeneous participation because the group of long-term-unemployed people is more diverse than often assumed. Against the background of the literature on subsidised employment, this contribution presents findings from an evaluation study of a job guarantee that was implemented in a small town in Lower Austria between 2020 and 2024. The aim of this paper is to explore the changes brought about by re-employment within a job creation scheme and in particular how the scheme coped with the diversity among the participants, which is a consequence of offering employment to all long-term-unemployed individuals. Based on data from a longitudinal mixed-methods study, the contribution shows how the project was implemented, to what extent the participants benefited from it and how the form of implementation met the different needs of participants. A typology based on qualitative data captures the diversity among the participants and shows how the scheme fits different groups. Finally, we discuss the pros and cons of the inclusion of diverse participants within one project.

This paper contends that the intractability of food insecurity as a social policy issue may have arisen in part because food access has become central to the interpretation of what is required to be food secure. We revisit key features of the evolution of the right to food and examine developments in the instruments used to monitor right to food progress. We articulate how the materiality of food access has come to the forefront of food systems policy, within which food insecurity is embedded but its structural underpinnings are lost. In turn, civil society food-based responses to growing food insecurity prevalence prevail. The pre-eminence of objectified food access as a socio-political orientation to food insecurity has refabricated the social problem of food need. A conscious uncoupling of food access from how we study and respond to food insecurity is needed to re-design food insecurity policy that is grounded in poverty alleviation.

This paper explores the theoretical and analytic possibilities of the concept of gharīb to offer a new understanding of regional displacement in what we know as the modern Middle East. The concept of gharīb (pl. ghurabāʾ) has accrued a wide range of meanings across time and space, including stranger, outcast, and exile, as well as pauper. By occupying the space between estrangement and poverty, the gharīb allows for an intersectional understanding of inequality, experienced by a growing number of marginalized and displaced communities in the Middle East. This paper honors the gharīb while making an analytic shift away from the category of the “refugee,” which has long been the dominant framework for personhood in the study of displacement. Combining genealogical analysis of the word gharīb with ethnographic accounts of displaced and impoverished communities in post-2011 Lebanon, I argue that legal binaries such as refugee versus citizen, and internal versus external displacement, have been further blurred against the backdrop of ongoing and interlocking forms of structural violence, inequality, and lack of protection for marginalized groups. The right to belong, therefore, is less about citizenry and more about a mode of social and economic poverty. This is particularly the case in the margins, where the repercussions of the ongoing crises are first and foremost felt. The gharīb, in contrast to such legal binaries, can be an analytic tool that allows us to delve deeper into the complexities of belonging, futurity, and rights without falling into the traps of methodological nationalism and top-down regional demarcations.

The association between low household income and adolescent mental health causes continuing concern. We examined the relation between household income and adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems, and explored individual, parental, and neighborhood characteristics. The sample included 872 Dutch adolescents (Mage = 14.93 years) oversampled on risk of psychopathology. Low income was defined as parent-reported net monthly household income below the 20th percentile (<€2000). Internalizing and externalizing problems were examined using the Youth Self-Report and Child Behavior Checklist. Covariates included sex, age, ethnic background, IQ, perceived social support, adverse life events, physical health, parental psychopathology, parental IQ, parent-child interaction, neighborhood unemployment rate, and neighborhood violence. Low household income was associated with more internalizing and externalizing problems. These associations were explained by more physical health concerns, increased parental psychopathology, more parent-child interaction problems, more adverse life events, lower perceived social support, and lower adolescent IQ. For all, except for mother-child interaction, a mediating role was suggested. This indicates a complex interplay between household income, individual, social, and parental factors affecting adolescent mental health. This study accentuates the necessity for a comprehensive, multi-faceted approach to address the negative effects of poverty on adolescent mental health, targeting these influences for preventive measures.

Tokyo Governor Koike Yuriko’s vision of a city where everyone can “shine” masks systemic contradictions in Japan’s future-making endeavors. While public proclamations frame Tokyo as inclusive and equitable, actions by Koike’s administration reveal abiding inequities. These efforts align with decades-long projects, most recently manifested in Society 5.0 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which prioritize market-driven growth while erasing systemic concerns of poverty and homelessness. Ethnographic insights from advocacy groups highlight the necessity of cultivating meaningful alternatives that emphasize empathetic dignity—a critique that underscores the necessity of reimagining Japan’s trajectory beyond performative policies of technologically mediated utopia futures.