Constituting Economic and Social Rights

Food water health housing and education are as fundamental to human freedom and dignity as privacy religion or speech. Yet only recently have legal systems begun to secure these fundamental individual interests as rights. This book looks at the dynamic processes that render economic and social rights in legal form. It argues that processes of interpretation enforcement and contestation each reveal how economic and social interests can be protected as human and constitutional rights and how their protection changes public law. Drawing on constitutional examples from South Africa Colombia Ghana India the United Kingdom the United States and elsewhere the book examines innovations in the design and role of institutions such as courts legislatures executives and agencies in the organization of social movements and in the links established with market actors. This comparative study shows how legal systems protect economic and social rights by shifting the focus from minimum bundles of commodities or entitlements to processes of value-based deliberative problem solving. Theories of constitutionalism and governance inform the potential of this approach to reconcile economic and social rights with both democratic and market principles while addressing the material inequality poverty and social conflict caused in part by law itself.Book FeaturesDevelops an original analytic model for understanding the rapid legal expansion of socio-economic rights and their impact on public law and constitutional theoryContains comparative examples from such constitutions as South Africa Canada Colombia Germany Ghana India United Kingdom and the United States as well as international systems enriching the comparative law literatureDraws on judicial legislativeand executive interactions as well as civil society and market participants in a sophisticated legal methodology overcoming the limitations of traditional court-focused studiesIncludes a foreword by Dean Martha Minow of Harvard Law SchoolTable of Contents:Introduction: The Path to TransformationPart I: Constituting Rights by Interpretation Interpretative Standpoints Interpreting the Minimum Interpreting LimitsPart II: Constituting Rights by Enforcement A Typology of Judicial Review The Catalytic Court A Comparative Typology of CourtsPart III: Constituting Rights by Contestation Social Movements and Economic and Social Rights The Governance Function of Economic and Social RightsConclusion: Economic and Social Rights as Human Rights and Constitutional Rights