On Social Assistance: An Administrative Law Perspective

Social assistance is a system that the country guarantees the impoverished citizen the right to subsistence. It is a reflection of modern service administration. As the last safety net of social security systems, social assistance has played a vital role in alleviating poverty, promoting social justice and maintaining social stability. Focusing on the rights and obligations between the government and its citizens, the dissertation puts forwards several proposals in establishing the Social Assistance Law.Besides the foreword and the conclusion, the paper can be divided into five chapters. The foreword is mainly about why I chose to study social assistance, the concept of social assistance and a brief summary of the existing literature. The first and second chapters constitute the theoretical part of this article, which is concerned with the legitimacy of social assistance and the right to social assistance. The other three chapters are about targeting of social assistance, the standard of social assistance, the procedure of social assistance decision and the remedies of social assistance disputes. The conclusion is a summary of the whole paper.The first chapter concerns with“the state: social assistance subject”. It tries to figure out how social assistance turned out to be a state behavior in England. In china, social assistance which was first carried out as kindness developed into human right. The transformation occurred because of the new understanding of poverty, the justice theory and social rights. Based on the analysis of the legitimacy of state to be the social assistance subject, it deals with how the government takes its responsibility. The government responsibility includes rule making, financial supplying, organizing, enforcement and supervising.The second chapter is about the right to social assistance as constitutional right. It discusses the nature of social right and the fundmental principles of Social Assistance Law. To an impoverished person, bread and water is the most important thing. To survive weighs out all the others. The right to freedom or voting should give place to the right to subsistence. Right to social assistance belongs to social rights, which first appeared in the beginning of the 20th century. To be a positive right, the right to social assistance can only be achieved with the state power. The right to social assistance has been stipulated in several international treaties and in constitutions or laws in most countries. The Chinese government is working hard to establish a social assistance law.The third chapter focuses on the purpose and standard of social assistance. When establishing the Social Assistance Law, we should make clear the purpose of this act first. The purpose of social assistance is to guarantee human rights and help people to live a decent life. To achieve this purpose we have to make sure that the client can get enough goods and service. We have to help them become a part of the society again. To make the purpose become real, the standard of social assistance is critical. However, there are many shortcomings in this area. In order to make the system work effectively, we have to reform thoroughly.The fourth chapter is about the problems arisen in the implementation of social assistance schemes. There are some people who are not qualified to achieve social assistance get the money by cheating, while some people who really need to get the money are still out the door. The procedure of inquiry fails to work. So we need to make some change. Besides, during the“means-tested”procedure and“hearing”, the right to privacy and some other rights are under stake. We should never infringe these areas.The fifth chapter concerns with dispute resolutions for social assistance. The amount of social assistance fees is quite small, but it is vital to the specific person who applies for it. The clients of social assistance are vulnerable and lack of knowledge about their rights. We have to establish a simple but efficient dispute resolution system to protect them. It first compares the remedies in the England and the United States. In these countries, the administrative remedies are more important than the judicial review. They have special tribunals or appeal committee to settle the disputes, which are more convenient, cheap and quick. In china, we have administrative reconsideration mechanism, administrative litigation and administrative compliant mechanism to settle disputes arose in social assistance decisions. However, these mechanisms don't work well and people don't know how to access justice. Considering the existed system of remedy, it suggests that we should give more priority to the administrative reconsideration mechanism in this area and strengthen the administrative reconsideration organ's independence, neutrality and transparency. The final goal is to resolve disputes cheaply, efficiently and with a minimum of delay and formality.