Relaunching the IACL Research Group on Social Rights, 2020

We are pleased to announce the relaunch of the IACL Research Group on Social Rights (RGSR) in 2020. As we enter a new decade with newer challenges being mounted to existing regimes of social protection and the enactment of new ones, the RGSR serves as a semi-institutionalised setting for sharpening current debates in legal scholarship and proposing directions for further research. The RGSR looks to enable scholarly conversations between academics researching and writing about international and domestic law relating to social rights.

Substantively, the RGSR will ask newer questions about the relationship between social rights and the broader political and social setting within which they are embedded. In an age of deepening inequality, what role should citizen entitlements from the government play in creating a safety net to provide the conditions necessary for human flourishing? How should levels of entitlements be judicially managed and adjudicated? Should courts or the representative branches be the focus of engagement for civil society coalitions? 

These are only some of the questions which this RG will engage with while acknowledging that the research agenda will be set in a collaborative way by the members of the RGSR. Three lines of enquiry form the priority for the RGSR, with members being free to suggest additions or elaborations, as well as sub-questions which can be subsumed within these. 

First, theorizing responses to claims that SR serve to cement a political imaginary concerned primarily with adequacy, rather than the setting of standards. Relatedly, the RGSR will look to situate its discussions within the broader political economy in which these rights are articulated. 

Second, the RGSR will explore the institutional forms which such responses can take, including newer forms of judicial review, or the increasing use of diagonal forms of accountability in the shape of human rights commissions and ombudsman bodies. 

Third, the RGSR will explore the relationship between equitable outcomes in social provisioning and the increasing algorithmization of the welfare beneficiary identification and delivery processes. 

Fourth, the RGSR will consider questions on the relationship between domestic constitutional and supranational adjudicatory responses to changes in social entitlements which have been altered in the wake of the global financial crisis. 

Fifth, the RGSR will consider the lessons which can be drawn from the judicial treatment of social rights across a variety of jurisdictions and what their implications are for comparative constitutional theory. 

As part of the relaunch, we aim to facilitate the dissemination of our group's research to a broader audience through short blog posts of approximately 600 - 800 words which will be posted on the RGSR site, while also being crossposted on the IACL Blog. Please email your proposals (100 words) for posts on issues relating to any of the above-identified areas by 5 March 2020 to Gaurav Mukherjee (mukherjee_gaurav@phd.ceu.edu). 

-  George Katrougalos

    Marcelo Figueiredo

    Victor Bazan

    Gaurav Mukherjee

Digest of Developments on Social Rights (Winter 2019 - 2020)

Developments in Courts and News

1. Human Rights Watch submitted a review to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’ in respect of France on its treatment of unaccompanied migrant children and its protection of students, teachers, and schools during armed conflict under the ICESCR.

2. A Dutch court ordered the immediate halt of an automated surveillance system for detecting welfare fraud because it violates human rights

3. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that it would not reconsider a decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals saying that enforcement of Boise’s ordinances constituted cruel and unusual punishment when “there is a greater number of homeless individuals in [the jurisdiction] than the number of available beds [in shelters].”

4. The High Court of Kenya halted a controversial biometric ID scheme until new data protection laws are enacted.

New Scholarship

1. Alexandre de le Court, Sufficiency principle and minimum social security benefits: an analysis from the perspective of the German right to a minimum of subsistence 32(2) Rev. derecho (Valdivia) (2019) (analyzing the recent case concerning social minimum in Germany from a comparative perspective).

2. Renu Ghimire, Right to Housing as a Fundamental Right in Post-Earthquake Nepal: The Interplay of Municipal and International Law 3 Nat. Jud. Acad. L.J. 205 (2019) (describing the heightened need for protection and interaction between domestic and international law in emergent situations in South Asia).

3. Toomas Kotkas, Ingrid Leijten, Frans Pennings (eds.), Specifying and Securing a Social Minimum in the Battle Against Poverty (2019) (bringing together a wide variety of perspectives on the legal and academic dimensions of a social minimum and its expression in law and policy across jurisdictions).

4. Juan Carlos Benito Sánchez, Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Decisions on the Right to Housing in Spain (2017–2018), in Ben Djazia et al., Forced Evictions and Judicial Developments Michel Vols, and Christoph U. Schmid (eds.), Houses, Homes and the Law. Studies in Housing Law (The Hague: Eleven International Publishing, 2019) (putting together CESCR committee decisions on forced evictions).

5. Jessie M. Hohmann, The Elements of Adequate Housing: Grenfell as Violation 5(2) Queen Mary Human Rights Law Review 1 (2019) (considering the Grenfell Tower fire as a breach of the right to housing by the UK, in contravention of its obligations under international law).

6. Conor Casey, Courts, Public Interest Litigation, and Homelessness: A Commentary on Recent Case Law Dublin University Law Journal (2019) (Forthcoming) (providing a summary of jurisprudence emerging from the High Court of Ireland).

7. Jootaek Lee, The Human Right to Education: Definition, Research and Annotated Bibliography 34(3) Emory International Law Review (2019).

 Announcements and Events

1. The Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, will host a one-week intensive short course on judicial enforcement of socio-economic rights in Africa from 18 to 22 May 2020. Apply online here. 

2. The 16th Economic and Social Rights Academic Network: UK & Ireland (ESRAN-UKI) workshop will be held at the University of Liverpool, School of Law and Social Justice on Friday 20 March 2020. Abstracts due by 21 February. 

3. The Law and Development Institute and Bucerius Law School will co-host the 2020 Law and Development Conference on “Law and Development in High-Income Countries” in Hamburg, Germany on November 6, 2020.

4. The Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, will host a one-week intensive short course on judicial enforcement of socio-economic rights in Africa on 18-23 May 2020.

5. The University of Nottingham Human Rights Law Centre and Doughty Street Chambers will be co-hosting a one-day training course entitled “Social Rights in Europe: Advocacy and Litigation” on Tuesday 10th March 2020.