We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
It is marvellous that we are gathered here to celebrate the 60th anniversary of this wonderful organization, ESCAP, which is such a pre-eminent part of the United Nations system. I am also delighted to see that the rich history of ESCAP is being put together in a report that the Executive Secretary has appropriately commissioned (and which is already available in a pre-publication form), called ‘The First Parliament of Asia’, an apt name for an interactive process in Asia in which ESCAP has played such a leading role over the last six decades. I am very fortunate to be here and to be able to join in these anniversary celebrations.
As the subject of my talk I have chosen the expression ‘Asian Immensities’, which draws on a phrase made famous by W. B. Yeats, the poet: ‘Asiatic vague immensities’.
This chapter draws upon an original dataset on ESRs in national constitutions to provide empirically grounded answers to how common is the broad category of ESR in constitutions around the world, whether there are differences in the specific social rights that are guaranteed constitutional protection. And what accounts for variation in the scope and nature across polities? It analyzes a new addition to the dataset that identifies changes in the presence and formal justiciability of ESRs from 2000 to 2016. The authors measure patterns of convergence and polarization in ESR entrenchment along three axes: region, legal tradition and types of rights. This analysis reveals that recent constitutions and constitutional amendments continue the trend. In 2016, ESRs are not only more present in constitutions but they are also more likely to be justiciable than ever before. Certain ESRs have become standard features of constitutions and of constitutional jurisprudence, in many cases given co-equal status with civil and political rights, while others are likely to remain largely declarative or aspirational in nature, with little impact on the actual realization of human well-being.
This chapter makes a conceptual and empirical case for empowered participatory jurisprudence (EPJ), a hybrid approach to the justiciability of socioeconomic rights (SERs) that brings together normative and democratic experimentalist theories of adjudication. EPJ’s institutional mechanisms entail a strong affirmation of rights, moderate court orders and strong monitoring of the implementation of those orders. Conceptually, EPJ is an instance of bounded democratic experimentalism, whereby courts act as catalysts of collective and iterative processes of collective problem solving. Such processes take place within the legal parameters of substantive SERs, on the one hand, and procedural (enabling) rights, on the other hand. The latter are meant to facilitate the empowered participation of victims of SER violations and their allies, as well as other sources of countervailing power in the implementation of court orders and relevant socioeconomic policies. Empirically, the chapter sketches a case study of the right to food case in India, which, it is argued, exemplifies several EPJ institutional principles and mechanisms.
Under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, States are expected to progressively realize the rights listed in the Covenant “to the maximum of available resources.” However, how such resources should be mobilized, and how spending priorities should be set, remain unsettled issues, on which the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights provided relatively little guidance to the States parties. A variety of approaches have been proposed, for instance, as to how taxation or the exploitation of natural resources relate to the realization of the Covenant rights, or as to how education, housing or healthcare should be prioritized in public budgets. This chapter proposes a framework to discuss how public finance relates to the realization of economic, social and cultural rights, linking resource mobilization, spending and outcomes; and it makes a number of suggestions as to how the Covenant could be relevant to the analysis of public budgets.
The future of economic and social rights is unlikely to resemble its past. Neglected within the human rights movement, avoided by courts, and subsumed within a single-minded conception of development as economic growth, economic and social rights enjoyed an uncertain status in international human rights law and in the public laws of most countries. However, 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. The Future of Economic and Social Rights captures the significant transformations occurring in the theory and practice of economic and social rights, in constitutional and human rights law. Professor Katharine G. Young brings together a group of distinguished scholars from diverse disciplines to examine and advance the broad research field of economic and social rights that incorporates legal, political science, economic, philosophy and anthropology scholars.
At this time when many have lost hope amidst conflicts, terrorism, environmental destruction, economic inequality and the breakdown of democracy, this beautifully written book outlines how to rethink and reform our key institutions - markets, corporations, welfare policies, democratic processes and transnational governance - to create better societies based on core principles of human dignity, sustainability, and justice. This new vision is based on the findings of over 300 social scientists involved in the collaborative, interdisciplinary International Panel on Social Progress. Relying on state-of-the-art scholarship, these social scientists reviewed the desirability and possibility of all relevant forms of long-term social change, explored current challenges, and synthesized their knowledge on the principles, possibilities, and methods for improving the main institutions of modern societies. Their common finding is that a better society is indeed possible, its contours can be broadly described, and all we need is to gather forces toward realizing this vision.
Social progress in the future will depend more on bottom-up initiatives and grassroots transformations than on top-down state interventions. Everyone can start the movement toward a better society by taking initiatives in the family, in the community, at work, and in the capacity of a parent, spouse, worker, employer, investor, consumer, voter, volunteer.