Unlike many other countries, the United States has few constitutional guarantees of social welfare rights such as income, housing, or healthcare. In part this is because many Americans believe that the courts cannot possibly enforce such guarantees. However, recent innovations in constitutional design in other countries suggest that such rights can be judicially enforced–not by increasing the power of the courts but by decreasing it. In Weak Courts, Strong Rights, Mark Tushnet uses a comparative may actually allow for stronger social welfare rights under American constitutional law. interpretations of the constitution are binding on other branches of executive to reject constitutional rulings by the judiciary–as long as Great Britain and Canada and discusses the extent to which legislatures can be expected to enforce constitutional norms on their own. With that background, he turns to social welfare rights, explaining the connection between the “state action” or “horizontal effect” doctrine and the enforcement of social welfare rights. Tushnet then draws rights. He demonstrates that there is a clear judicial path–not an insurmountable judicial hurdle–to better enforcement of constitutional social welfare rights.

Weak Courts, Strong Rights: Judicial Review And Social Welfare Rights In Comparative Constitutional Law PDF

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