Mathews v. Eldridge

Note: please do review the footnotes included in the case.

Mathews v. Eldridge comes six years after a case called Goldberg v. Kelly, in which the Supreme Court ruled that procedural due process required the federal government to offer an evidentiary hearing to a welfare benefits recipient before terminating the benefits. In Mathews, the court distinguishes Goldberg in two primary ways. First, while the court acknowledges that, like Goldberg, Mathews also deals with a “property interest” (i.e., “the interest of an individual in continued receipt of these benefits”), the court finds substantive differences between welfare and disability benefits. What, according to the court, are the interests at issue in Goldberg and Matthews, and how does the difference between them translate into a constitutional distinction?  Second, the court finds a difference in the nature of the determination (and thus the risk of error) in the Goldberg and Matthews settings.  What is this difference, and how does it translate into a constitutional distinction?

Note: the procedural steps for terminating (and then appealing) disability benefits are a little complicated. Keep your eye on the ball. What is at issue here? What exactly is the alteration in the existing procedure for which the benefits recipient is arguing?

A final note: the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires the government to provide due process of law before depriving someone of “life, liberty, or property.” Goldberg and Matthews drew in part from a broadened conceptualization of property theorized by Yale Law Professor Charles Reich in his article, “The New Property.” For Reich, things like drivers’ licenses and public benefits could be considered “property” in part because they are necessary for recipients to function fully in modern society.  You are not responsible for the distinction between "old" and "new" property in this course (it is a constitutional law concept), but if you do grasp it, it can be useful for understanding how procedural due process works.  By way of example, we will discuss bonds and counterbonds in this class; would it make sense to require a bond in a federal government new property case?