Rights And Their Realisation

Abstract

The debate about economic, social and cultural rights is a lively and contentious one. Controversy centres on two problems. First, there is the alleged inherent difficulty in asserting that these concerns can in fact claim the status of rights. Second, and relatedly, there is the issue of whether they are justiciable, that is, can they be the subject of adjudication and enforcement? These two problems are inextricably intertwined. If, as many argue economic and social rights are not rights but goals and aspirations of human society, then they are not issues for the courts but for the policy process. At the same time, however, it can be argued that justiciability itself cannot be narrowly confined to the court process alone, but is more properly defined as a matter of review processes, and thus of enforcement and implementation.