This title was first published in 2001: Welfare law is a legal field integral to most jurisprudential formulations, whether artificially designated as doctrinal, theoretical or practical. At its core, legal discourse regarding welfare challenges the formulations traditionally viewed as 'pre-legal', the 'background rules' of property, tort and contract law. In addition, it affects a large percentage of the world's population, highlights the social construction of identities and perhaps more than any other area of law, graphically epitomizes the intersection of class, race and gender distinctions. However, within both the legal academy and practice, welfare law has been marginalized and viewed as a field that does not connect to any but a small sector of lawyers and legal clients. Isolated as an arcane domain of either statutory and regulatory legal minutiae or jurisprudential insignificance, welfare law has never realized its potential as a major hub for legal theoretical discourse. The articles in this volume seek to expose the roots of the essentialized view of welfare law as nonessential and re-establish its value and importance.

This book discusses a range of rights controversies from both theoretical and practical perspectives. It considers specific issues in the litigation and adjudication of social and economic rights cases from the differing standpoints of activists, lawyers, and adjudicators.

Since World War II, a growing number of jurisdictions in both the developing and industrialized worlds have adopted progressive constitutions that guarantee social and economic rights (SER) in addition to political and civil rights. Parallel developments have occurred at transnational level with the adoption of treaties that commit signatory states to respect and fulfil SER for their peoples. This book is a product of the International Social and Economic Rights Project (iSERP), a global consortium of judges, lawyers, human rights advocates, and legal academics who critically examine the effectiveness of SER law in promoting real change in people's lives. The book addresses a range of practical, political, and legal questions under these headings, with acute sensitivity to the racial, cultural, and gender implications of SER and the path-breaking SER jurisprudence now emerging in the "Global South". The book brings together internationally renowned experts in the field of social and economic rights to discuss a range of rights controversies from both theoretical and practical perspectives. Contributors of the book consider specific issues in the litigation and adjudication of SER cases from the differing standpoints of activists, lawyers, and adjudicators in order to identify and address the specific challenges facing the SER community. This book will be of great use and interest to students and scholars of comparative constitutional law, human rights, public international law, development studies, and democratic political theory.