Stato del benessere o benessere dello Stato? Giustizia sociale, politiche demografiche e ordine economico nell’esperienza statunitense

This paper builds upon the use of «welfare of the state» which can be found in US court decisions and legal literature in the first half of the 20th Century. It tries to demonstrate that it is not an empty formula, since it shows the real reason behind the formation of the Welfare State. The latter was created and developed as a construction aimed at neutralising social conflict and enhancing cooperation between capital and labour with public law measures (social security), as well as with private law measures (labour law). All this was the core of the neoliberal way of interpreting society, based on the assumption that the State had to support capitalism by functionalizing individual behaviour to sustain the functioning of free competition: This was the point of reference for its «welfare».