Editor: Katherine G. Young
Publisher:  Cambridge University Press – 683 pages
Book Review by: Sonu Chandiram

Economic and social rights are an important par, yet often overlooked part of the wide range of human rights, contends the editor of this book Katherine Young. But here is the present and past situation with them, she points out – they are essentially:

  • Neglected within the human rights movement
  • Avoided by courts
  • Subsumed with a single-minded conception of development as economic growth, economic and social rights faced an uncertain status in internal human rights law and in the public laws of most countries

She elaborates: “Today, under conditions of immense poverty, insecurity and political instability, the rights to education, health care, housing, social security, food, water and sanitation are central components of the human rights agenda.”

In this important, insightful, and highly valuable book on the economic and social rights of people living the world over, Professor Young presents some examples of how such rights are not realities, even as they form part of international human rights law.

Under her leadership, guidance and supervision, 31 specialists in economic and social rights, from all over the United States and nine other countries – Argentina, Australia, Canada, Colombia, France, India, Norway, South Africa, and the United Kingdom – discuss the various issues at length in this work of nearly 700 pages. We provide you a broad overview of its contents below:

  1. Introduction
  2. Part I – Adjudication and Rights: Global Trends
  3. Justiciable and Aspirational Economic and Social Rights in National Constitutions
  4. Judicial Politics and Social Rights
  5. Constitutional Non-Transformation? Socioeconomic Rights Beyond the Poor
  6. Part II – Education and Rights in Context: Two Contrasts
  7. The Right to Education in the American State Courts
  8. Legislating Human Rights: Experience of the Right to Education Act in India
  9. Part III – Education and Rights: Democracy and Courts
  10. The Participatory Democratic Turn in South Africa’s Social Rights Jurisprudence
  11. Why Do We Care about Dialogue? ‘Notwithstanding Clause’. ‘Meaningful Engagement’ and Public Hearings: A Sympathetic but Critical Analysis
  12. Empowered Participatory Jurisprudence: Experimentation, Deliberation and Norms in Socioeconomic Rights Adjudication
  13. Courts and Economic and Social Rights / Courts as Economic and Social Rights
  14. Part IV – Economic and Social Rights in Retrenchment: Past and Future
  15. The Future of Social Rights: Social Rights as Capstone
  16. The Present Limits and Future Potential of European Social Constitutionalism
  17. Canada’s Confounding Experience with Human Rights Litigation and the Search or a Silver Lining
  18. Universal basic Income as a Social Rights-Based Antidote to Growing Economic Insecurity
  19. Part V – Economic and Social Rights in Development: Local and Global Trajectories
  20. Rights as Logistics: Notes on the Right to Food and Food Retail Liberalization in India
  21. Human Rights, Investment, and the Rights-ification of Development: The Practice of ‘Human Rights Impact Assessments’ in Large-Scale Foreign Investments in Natural Resources
  22. Human Rights Testimony in a Different Pitch: Speaking Political Power
  23. Grassroots Lawfare: How South Africa’s Urban Poor Use Land as a Legal Instrument
  24. Part VI – Rights and Accountability: Emerging Doctrines, Evolving Concepts
  25. Public Budget Analysis for the Realization of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Conceptual Framework and Practical Implementation
  26. Bridging the Gap: The Evolving Doctrine on ESCR and ‘Maximum Available Resources’
  27. Waiting for Rights: Progressive Realization and Lost Time

In sum, this book provides not only an extensive broad brush yet intensive look of the past and present condition of the economic and social rights of humans worldwide, it is also a forecast of what we can expect to see in the future in this area.

 

Editor:

Katherine G. Young is Associate Professor of Law at Boston College Law School. She has published widely in the fields of public law, human rights and constitutionalism and is the author of Constituting Economic and Social Rights (2012) and editor of The Public Law of Gender (2016) with Kim Rubenstein. She completed her doctorate in law at Harvard University and was a fellow at Harvard’s Justice, Welfare and Economics program.