SERVING THE STATE - CONSTITUTIONALISM AND SOCIAL SPENDING, 1860S-1920S

In the 19th century, courts supervised states' social, spending by lim iting taxation to public purposes. The focus of this article is the co urts' approach to Pensions. Under a 19th-century doctrine, states coul d pay money to those who had served the state or, under the rubric of charity, to those who were the indigent helpless. States first paid pe nsions to people for military service and for serving as firemen; late r in the century, the doctrine from these cases provided a framework f or expanding civil service pensions as states expanded their civil ser vice. Courts characterized the earlier pensions as earned because the service had been dangerous, requiring bravery from men and possibly le aving helpless women and children without protection. This characteriz ation later shaped evaluations of civil service pensions. The doctrine persisted as states enacted pensions for widowed mothers; when these pensions were challenged in state courts, the courts approved of them as payments to helpless people, not as rewards to those who had served . This characterization counters recent scholarship that argues that m others' pensions rewarded service as military pensions did.