Chile's constitutional moment began as a popular demand in late 2019. This collection seizes the opportunity of this unique moment to unpack the context, difficulties, opportunities, and merits to enhance the status of environmental and social rights (health, housing, education and social security) in a country's constitution. Learning from Chilean and international experiences from the Global South and North, and drawing on the analysis of both academics and practitioners, the book provides rigorous answers to the fundamental questions raised by the construction of a new constitutional bill of rights that embraces climate and social justice. With an international and comparative perspective, chapters look at issues such as political economy, the judicial enforceability of social rights, implications of the privatisation of public services, and the importance of active participation of most vulnerable groups in a constitutional drafting process. Ahead of the referendum on a new constitution for Chile in the second half of 2022, this collection is timely and relevant and will have direct impact on how best to legislate effectively for social rights in Chile and beyond.

“Constitution” is a rich term in Western political culture, encompassing political and juridical doctrine as well as government practices through the ages. This volume examines “constitutional moments” in history, those occasions or episodes when significant steps were taken in the definition or redefinition of polities. Their actors were writers or politicians, rulers or ruled, who found inspiration in a distant past or instead looked towards a future to be drawn anew. This book sheds light on such moments from Ancient Greece to the present day, mostly in Europe but also in the Ottoman world and the Americas, thereby uncovering a revealing variety of constitutional thinking and action throughout history. Contributors are: Jon Arrieta, Niall Bond, Luc Brisson, Peter Cholakov, Nora Chonowski, Angela De Benedictis, F. Sinem Eryilmaz, Hakon Evju, Pablo Fernández Albaladejo, Javier Fernández Sebastián, Merieke Gebhardt, Xavier Gil, Mark J. Hill, Ferenc Hörcher, Jaska Kainulainen, Thomas Lorman, Adriana Luna-Fabritius, Ere Nokkala, Brian Kjaer Olesen, András Pap, Nikola Regent, Alberto Mariano Rodríguez Martínez, Pablo Sánchez León, José Reis Santos, and Ersin Yildiz.

Food, water, health, housing, and education are as fundamental to human freedom and dignity as privacy, religion, or speech. Yet only recently have legal systems begun to secure these fundamental individual interests as rights. This book looks at the dynamic processes that render economic and social rights in legal form. It argues that processes of interpretation, enforcement, and contestation each reveal how economic and social interests can be protected as human and constitutional rights, and how their protection changes public law. Drawing on constitutional examples from South Africa, Colombia, Ghana, India, the United Kingdom, the United States and elsewhere, the book examines innovations in the design and role of institutions such as courts, legislatures, executives, and agencies in the organization of social movements and in the links established with market actors. This comparative study shows how legal systems protect economic and social rights by shifting the focus from minimum bundles of commodities or entitlements to processes of value-based, deliberative problem solving. Theories of constitutionalism and governance inform the potential of this approach to reconcile economic and social rights with both democratic and market principles, while addressing the material inequality, poverty and social conflict caused, in part, by law itself.

This authoritative commentary prepared by scholars from the Academic Network on the European Social Charter and Social Rights (ANESC) is intended for academic researchers studying social and economic rights in Europe and legal practitioners, civil society organisations, trade unions and state representatives engaging with the procedures of the European Committee of Social Rights. The text comprises contributions from a diverse group of experts, bringing together senior and young scholars from various countries and legal traditions, expertise in social and economic rights, coupled with a commitment to enhancing the European system for regulating these rights. The commentary consists of 106 chapters, organised into eight volumes on the substantive obligations of State Parties to the European Social Charter and the practice of the European Committee of Social Rights. Other chapters delve into the procedures that state representatives, international bodies and applicants must follow to engage with the Charter system. Volume 3, which encompasses Articles 11 to 19, examines critical ESC welfare rights for the general population and specific groups of people against the jurisprudence of the European Committee of Social Rights and other international standards.

The Routledge Handbook of Constitutional Law is an advanced level reference work which surveys the current state of constitutional law. Featuring new, specially commissioned papers by a range of leading scholars from around the world, it offers a comprehensive overview of the field as well as identifying promising avenues for future research. The book presents the key issues in constitutional law thematically allowing for a truly comparative approach to the subject. It also pays particular attention to constitutional design, identifying and evaluating various solutions to the challenges involved in constitutional architecture. The book is split into four parts for ease of reference: Part One: General issues "sets issues of constitutional law firmly in context including topics such as the making of constitutions, the impact of religion and culture on constitutions, and the relationship between international law and domestic constitutions. Part Two: Structures presents different approaches in regard to institutions or state organization and structural concepts such as emergency powers and electoral systems Part Three: Rights covers the key rights often enshrined in constitutions Part Four: New Challenges - explores issues of importance such as migration and refugees, sovereignty under pressure from globalization, Supranational Organizations and their role in creating post-conflict constitutions, and new technological challenges. Providing up-to-date and authoritative articles covering all the key aspects of constitutional law, this reference work is essential reading for advanced students, scholars and practitioners in the field.

Constitutional Amendments: Making, Breaking, and Changing Constitutions is both a roadmap for navigating the intellectual universe of constitutional amendments and a blueprint for building and improving the rules of constitutional change. Drawing from dozens of constitutions in every region of the world, this book blends theory with practice to answer two all-important questions: what is an amendment and how should constitutional designers structure the procedures of constitutional change? The first matters now more than ever. Reformers are exploiting the rules of constitutional amendment, testing the limits of legal constraint, undermining the norms of democratic government, and flouting the constitution as written to create entirely new constitutions that masquerade as ordinary amendments. The second question is central to the performance and endurance of constitutions. Constitutional designers today have virtually no resources to guide them in constructing the rules of amendment, and scholars do not have a clear portrait of the significance of amendment rules in the project of constitutionalism. This book shows that no part of a constitution is more important than the procedures we use change it. Amendment rules open a window into the soul of a constitution, exposing its deepest vulnerabilities and revealing its greatest strengths. The codification of amendment rules often at the end of the text proves that last is not always least.

Constitutionalism is in crisis. And the crisis unfolds not only on a national or a regional level. It is a global phenomenon: Democracy is no longer on the rise, the Rule of Law appears weakened, political cohesion seems to erode. Human Rights Protection finds itself questioned, International Criminal Law struggles for broad recognition, international trade may have lost some of its appeal. Institutional actors find their authority questioned, established political parties are threatened by ever-changing popular movements. But where to does the charted road lead? How will the “Crisis of Constitutionalism” unfold in the years to come? Nobody knows, of course. But at the same time: Nobody is too keen to make an educated guess either. This volume remedies that. By giving nine eminent scholars in law and political science the opportunity to make their predictions, where the constitutionalist project will stand ten years from now, it creates a forum of deliberation that will not only aim at anticipating the developments in question but at the same time shape academic discourse on constitutionalism alongside it.

Offers a novel take on the purpose of labour law and connects constitutional ideals with the objective of labour law.

This volume explores the social and political forces behind constitution making from a global perspective. It combines leading theoretical perspectives on the social and political foundations of constitutions with a range of in-depth case studies on constitution making in nineteen countries. The result is an examination of constitutions as social phenomena and their interaction with other social phenomena, from various perspectives in the social sciences.