A Role For The Courts In Ensuring The Enforcement Of The Socio Economic Rights Of The Child

This paper defends a role for the courts in ensuring the vindication of children's socio-economic rights where the elected branches of government have not done so. In it, I argue that it is legitimate for the courts to act assertively in order to ensure that children's socio-economic rights are implemented. Such judicial activity may extend to the courts prescribing steps that the state must take in order to fulfil the positive obligations imposed by children's socio-economic rights. In doing so, the courts exercise control over the discretion of the other organs of government with regard to law- or policy-making. The paper focuses on the positivistic legal legitimacy within a constitutional liberal democracy of the courts acting assertively in order to guarantee children's socio-economic rights. In particular, I argue that the courts may behave in this way even where such judicial behaviour appears prima facie to be undemocratic or counter-majoritarian.

This book is concerned with children's economic and social rights (sometimes referred to simply as children's social rights). Despite increased academic interest in both children's rights and socio-economic rights over the last two decades, children's social and economic rights remain a comparatively neglected area. This is particularly true with regard to the role of the courts in the enforcement of such social rights. Aoife Nolan's book remedies this omission, focussing on the circumstances in which the courts can and should give effect to the social and economic rights of children. The arguments put forward are located within the context of, and develop, long-standing debates in constitutional law, democratic theory and human rights. The claims made by the author are supported and illustrated by concrete examples of judicial enforcement of children's social and economic rights from a variety of jurisdictions. The work is thus rooted in both theory and practice. The author brings together and addresses a wide range of issues that have never previously been considered together in book form. These include children's socio-economic rights; children as citizens and their position in relation to democratic decision-making processes; the implications of children and their rights for democratic and constitutional theory; the role of the courts in ensuring the enforcement of children's rights; and the debates surrounding the litigation and adjudication of social and economic rights. This book thus represents a major original contribution to the existing scholarship in a range of areas including human (and specifically social) rights, legal and political theory and constitutional law. 'Children's rights were often thought to be synonymous with economic and social welfare prior to the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989. Ironically, since that time, remarkably little scholarship has been devoted to the vitally important economic and social rights dimensions of children's rights. Nolan's book singlehandedly remedies that neglect and does so in a sophisticated, nuanced and balanced way. It provides a superb account of the pros and cons of judicial activism in promoting these rights.' Philip Alston, John Norton Pomeroy Professor, NYU Law School 'Thus far the burgeoning literature on the judicial enforcement of socio-economic rights has failed to engage in a sustained, systemic manner with this topic from the perspective of children and the complexity of their status as citizens within contemporary democracies. This book fills this gap and makes a major contribution to the literature in the three interrelated areas of the judicial review of socio-economic rights claims, children's rights, and democratic theory. Nolan navigates skilfully through the dense, but rich literature in these areas as well as relevant international and comparative law. In so doing she illuminates both the pitfalls and potential of resorting to courts in a partial response to the multifaceted and deeply entrenched global phenomenon of child poverty.' Professor Sandra Liebenberg, HF Oppenheimer Professor of Human Rights Law, University of Stellenbosch Law Faculty. Winner of the Kevin Boyle Book Prize 2012, awarded by the Irish Association of Law Teachers to a book that is deemed to have made an outstanding contribution to the understanding of law.

Drawing on a wide range of interdisciplinary resources, this scholarly work provides an in-depth and thorough analysis of the socio-economic rights jurisprudence of the newly democratic South Africa. The book explores how the judicial interpretation and enforcement of socio-economic rights can be more responsive to the conditions of systemic poverty and inequality characterising South African society. Based on meticulous research, the work marries legal analysis with perspectives from political philosophy and democratic theory.

This book examines the role of the federal courts in policymaking for children. Believing that the federal courts are uniquely situated to provide relief to the less powerful in society, Mezey assesses the judiciary's response to the demands for children's rights and benefits across a number of policy areas and a range of statutory and constitutional issues. Through analysis of Supreme Court and lower court opinions over the last several decades, she determines the extent to which federal court decisionmaking has affected the legal, political, economic, and social status of children in the United States.

The Role of International Law in the Elimination of Child Labor offers an indispensible contribution to current debates on child labor. It addresses a broad range of subdisciplines, analyzing child labor in the context of social, economic, and cultural issues. The first part of the book traces the development of contemporary law relating to child labor, specifically addressing child slavery, child sexual exploitation, and the use of child soldiers. Part II is devoted to observance and enforcement, discussing state and private reporting mechanisms, complaint procedures, and sanctions. The book is the 28th volume in the Procedural Aspects of International Law (PAIL) Monograph Series.

In 2014 the world’s most widely ratified human rights treaty, one specifically for children, reached the milestone of its twenty-fifth anniversary. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and in the time since then it has entered a new century, reshaping laws, policies, institutions and practices across the globe, along with fundamental conceptions of who children are, their rights and entitlements, and society’s duties and obligations to them. Yet despite its rapid entry into force worldwide, there are concerns that the Convention remains a high-level paper treaty without the traction on the ground needed to address ever-continuing violations of children’s rights. This book, based on papers from the conference ‘25 Years CRC’ held by the Department of Child Law at Leiden University, draws together a rich collection of research and insight by academics, practitioners, NGOs and other specialists to reflect on the lessons of the past 25 years, take stock of how international rights find their way into children’s lives at the local level, and explore the frontiers of children’s rights for the 25 years ahead.

In the space of two decades, social rights have emerged from the shadows and margins of human rights jurisprudence. The authors in this book provide a critical analysis of almost two thousand judgments and decisions from twenty-nine national and international jurisdictions. The breadth of the decisions is vast, from the resettlement of evictees to the regulation of private medical plans to the development of state programs to address poverty and illiteracy. The jurisprudence not only implicates our understanding of economic, social, and cultural rights, but also challenges the philosophical debates that question whether these rights can and should be justiciable.