Osgoode Faculty Lunch Seminar: Social Rights, South Africa and the Second-Wave Cases
Mar 26, 2012, 12:30pm-2pm
Abstract
The South African Constitutional Court is an internationally recognized leader in developing innovative enforcement approaches to social rights. But a string of the Court's decisions beginning in 2008 with the housing-rights case Olivia Road have garnered comparatively little attention. Stuart Wilson and Jackie Dugard – activists and scholars who were key players in them – recently coined the term “second-wave” to describe these cases. As Wilson and Dugard note, while the Court’s formal doctrinal approach is nominally the same in both the first- and second-wave cases, the second-wave cases reveal a distinctly different – and, in their view, far less effective – approach to both interpretation and enforcement of the social-rights provisions. A defining element of this shift in approach is the Court’s innovative engagement requirement that imposes a constitutional obligation on government entities to consult affected citizens when developing large-scale social-welfare policies. This paper argues that, while engagement embodies the decisive turn in the direction of proceduralization evident in the second-wave cases, at the same time, a robust understanding of engagement offers a potentially powerful tool for enforcing the social-rights provisions, but largely through political and administrative measures rather than directly through court intervention.
Professor Ray's scholarship focuses on comparative and international law with a regional emphasis on South Africa.
Please RSVP: www.osgoode.yorku.ca/research/rsvp
Event Code: BrianRay2012
Social Rights, South Africa and the Second-Wave Cases
by:
Professor Brian E. Ray of Cleveland Marshall College of Law, USA
| Location: | 2027 Osgoode Hall Law School |
| Sponsor: | Osgoode Hall Law School |
| Posted by: | Jody-Ann Rowe-Butler |
| Web Site | http://www.osgoode.yorku.ca/research/rsvp |
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