Lucy A. Williams

A nationally recognized authority on welfare law and low-wage labor, Professor Williams focuses on the dependency created in low-wage labor relationships, and how the political rhetoric connecting "dependency" with receipt of welfare has diverted attention from the structural issues within low-wage labor markets. She has a long and impressive record as both an academic and a litigator in the areas of unemployment insurance, Social Security and related welfare programs.

In recent years, Professor Williams has expanded her work to address issues of global poverty and the justiciability of social and economic rights. She currently convenes the International Social and Economic Rights Project (iSERP), a group of international academics, judges and activists working to encourage and develop critical and transformative thinking about SER and SER-based legal strategies. She is also a co-director of the law school's Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy.

Prior to joining the Northeastern faculty, Professor Williams was an attorney with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute for 13 years. She teaches in the area of social welfare law, civil procedure and federal courts and is involved in the law school’s Legal Skills in Social Context program. In 1994-1995, she was honored by the school as the Public Interest Distinguished Professor.

Selected Publications

“The Legal Construction of Poverty: Gender, ‘Work,’ and the ‘Social Contract,’” Stellenbosch Law Review (forthcoming 2011
“The Role of Courts in the Quantitative-Implementation of Social and Economic Rights: A Comparative Study,” Constitutional Court Review (2010) 3, Pretoria University Law Press (PULP) 2011
International Poverty: An Emerging Discourse, ed. Zed Books, 2006.
“Issues and Challenges in Addressing Poverty and Legal Rights: A Comparative United States/South African Analysis,” 21 South African Journal on Human Rights 436 (2005)
“Poor Women’s Work Experiences: Gaps in the ‘Work-Family’ Discussion,” in Labour Law, Work and Family: Critical and Comparative Perspectives (Conaghan and Rittich, eds.) (Oxford University Press, 2005)
“Beyond Labour Law’s Parochialism: A Re-Envisioning of the Discourse of Redistribution,” Labor Law in an Era of Globalization: Transformative Practices and Possibilities. Conaghan, ed. Oxford University Press, 2002

“Unemployment Insurance and Low Wage Work,” Hard Labor: Women and Work in the Post-Welfare Era. Handler and White, eds. 1999.
Decades of Distortion: The Right’s 30-year Assault on Welfare, Political Research Associates, 1997.
“The Mythogenesis of Gender: Judicial Images of Women in Paid and Unpaid Labor” (with Brown and Baumann), 6 UCLA Women’s Law Journal 457, 1996.
“Race, Rat Bites, and Unfit Mothers: How Media Discourse Informs Welfare Legislation Debate,” 22 Fordham Urban Law Journal 1159, 1995.
“The Abuse of §1115 Waivers: Welfare Reform in Search of a Standard,” 12 Yale Law and Policy Review 8, 1994.
“The Ideology of Division: Behavior Modification Welfare Reform Proposals,” 102 Yale Law Journal 719, December 1992.