I Book Review: Socio-Economic Rights: Adjudication under a Transformative Constitution
| Published date | 01 September 2012 |
| Author | Paul O'Connell |
| Date | 01 September 2012 |
| DOI | 10.1177/016934411203000308 |
| Subject Matter | Part D: DocumentationI Book Review |
Netherlands Q uarterly of Human R ights, Vol. 30/3, 363–366, 2012.
© Netherlands I nstitute of Human Ri ghts (SIM), Printed in the Net herlands. 363
PART D: DOCUMENTATION
I BOOK REVIEW
Sandra Liebenberg, Soc io-Economic Rights: Adjudication Under a Transformative
Constitution, Cape Town, Juta & Co Ltd., 2010, ISBN 9780702184802 (paperback,
xxv + 541 p.)
Over the last 15 to 20 years, socio-economic rights have begun to emerge f rom the
shadows into which they had been cas t by, among other things, t he Cold War induced
“rights dichotomy”. A number of factors have contributed to this blossoming, f rom
Henry Shue’s seminal work on the multifarious nature of obligations imposed on
States by human rights1 to the ongoing campa ign for the adoption of an Optional
Protocol for individual complaints to t he International Covenant on Economic, Socia l
and Cultural R ights.2 However, one of the crucial events in t his period, which was
both a response to changi ng attitudes to socio-economic rights and in tu rn a catalyst
for changing views, w as the adoption of the new South African Const itution in 1996.
Since then, the South Af rican experience in constitutionalisi ng socio-economic
rights, or more specica lly in judicial enforcement of these rights, h as been the subject
of intense and variegated scr utiny.
In this work, Sandra Liebenberg provides the most comprehensive survey of
South Africa’s socio-economic rights jurisprudence to date. As Liebenberg notes in
the Preface, her research ca reer has been dedicated to answering ‘the question of how
the judicial interpretat ion and enforcement of […] socio-economic rights ca n be more
responsive to conditions of systemic poverty a nd inequality in South African society’,
and the expert ise accrued through this l ife-long commitment is brought to bear in this
impressive study.3 e book begins wit h an important contextua lising chapter, in which
Liebenberg shows that as well as bei ng a system of formal political disenf ranchisement,
apartheid was a lso a system of social margina lisation and immiseration. Conse quently,
eorts to transform po st-apartheid South Africa were bound to conf ront the question of
socio-economic rights; a lthough Liebenberg shows that the value of such rights was by
1 Shue, H., Basic Rig hts: Subsistence, Auence an d U.S. Foreign Polic y, Princeton Universit y Press,
Princeton, 1996 ; Shue’s typology was subsequ ently embraced by UN human r ights organs and has
since helped to reshap e debates about the natu re of states’ obligations w ith respect to huma n rights,
and, in large me asure, to dissolve t he positive/negative right s dichotomy.
2 On the Optiona l Protocol see: Mahon, C. ‘P rogress at the Front: e Dra Optional Protocol to t he
Internationa l Covenant on Economic, Soci al and Cultural R ights’, Human Rights Law Rev iew, Vol.
8, No. 4, 2008, pp. 617–646 .
3 Liebenberg, S., S ocio-Economic Rights: Adjudication Under a Transformative Constitution, Juta &
Co Ltd., Cape Town, 2010, p. xxi.
To continue reading
Request your trial