Abstract: | Summary Legal reforms to welfare systems are analysed as either involvinglegalization, the formulation of rules, or judicialization,the improvement of procedures. The implications of these typesof reform for the supplementary benefits system are examined.It is suggested that there are likely to be severe drawbacksto legalization which does not involve, in effectthe elimination of selectivity. Judicialization, on the otherhand, is seen to offer needed procedural reforms, but it issuggested that there has been a failure to recognize the inherentlimitations of innovations of this kind, where the poor mayneed so much more than merely the guarantee of a fair hearing |