David Super joined the University of Maryland School of Law in 2004 as an Associate Professor and became Professor in 2006. For the prior decade, Professor Super served as general counsel to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Washington and Lee University and Yale Law Schools and has taught as a visiting lecturer or adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Howard University Law School, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and Princeton University.

Prof. Super has devoted himself to reconstructing an intellectual framework for anti-poverty law. His first article, “Offering an Invisible Hand: The Rise of the Personal Choice Model for Rationing Public Benefits” published last year in the Yale Law Journal, was an inquiry into the basic nature of public welfare law. “The Political Economy of Entitlement” and “Are Rights Efficient?”, appearing in the Columbia Law Review and the California Law Review, respectively, argue that entitlements are the most efficient and transparent public benefit programs.

Professor Super’s NYU Law Review piece entitled “The Quiet ‘Welfare’ Revolution: The Resurrection of the Food Stamp Program in the Wake of the 1996 Welfare Law” argues that an emphasis on work and great state flexibility can be implemented in ways that support, rather than undermining, low-income families. In “Laboratories of Destitution:  Democratic Experimentalism and the Failure of Anti-Poverty Law,” published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, however, he argues that anti-poverty law’s reliance on decentralization has been excessive and counter-productive.  “Privatization, Policy Paralysis, and the Poor,” also published in the California Law Review, he expresses similar concerns about ill-considered efforts to privatize application assistance and eligibility determination in these programs.

“The New Moralizers: Transforming the Conservative Legal Agenda,” also published in the Columbia Law Review, seeks to place moral arguments for time limits and other restrictions on public benefits in the context of broader changes in the conservative legal and public policy agenda. His Harvard Law Review article, “Rethinking Fiscal Federalism,” identifies features of states’ fiscal constitutions that create subtle but strong biases against programs serving low-income people that over time are likely to leave these programs with substantially less funding than their political support might otherwise indicate.

Professor Super graduated from Princeton University magna cum laude and from the Harvard Law School with honors. After working for four years as an attorney at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, he served as a staff attorney at the National Health Law Program and as staff attorney and legal director for the Food Research Action Center. As general counsel to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, he focused on food assistance and income security programs for low-income people, including those serving immigrants and persons with disabilities. He continues to write for legal services publications and to conduct trainings for legal services programs around the country.

Professor Super teaches courses on administrative law, civil procedure, evidence, legal profession, legislation, local government law, property, public welfare law, regulatory theory and torts.