Epstein’s wording closely follows that of a famous family responsibility judgment made by the Illinois Supreme Court in 1896, People v. James W. Hill, 163 Ill. 186 (1896). Here it was stated that the object of both the original Elizabethan poor laws and those enacted by the state of Illinois was “to protect the public from loss occasioned by the neglect of a moral or natural duty imposed on individuals, and to do this by transforming the imperfect moral duty into a statutory and legal liability.”

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 922