Social Rights Judgments and the Politics of Compliance : Making it Stick

This book is the first to engage in a broad comparative study of the enforcement of judgments of social rights, such as health, housing, social security and education. It finds both spectacular successes and failures and analyses why there is a variance and what can be done to improve compliance with court rulings.

The past few decades have witnessed an explosion of judgments on social rights around the world. However, we know little about whether these rulings have been implemented. Social Rights Judgments and the Politics of Compliance is the first book to engage in a comparative study of compliance of social rights judgments as well as their broader effects. Covering fourteen different domestic and international jurisdictions, and drawing on multiple disciplines, it finds significant variance in outcomes and reveals both spectacular successes and failures in making social rights a reality on the ground. This variance is strikingly similar to that found in previous studies on civil rights, and the key explanatory factors lie in the political calculus of defendants and the remedial framework. The book also discusses which strategies have enhanced implementation, and focuses on judicial reflexivity, alliance building and social mobilisation.