Engaging with Social Rights

Brian Ray is Professor of Law at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State University. He has published widely on social rights and judicial review, and his work has appeared in leading journals including the Stanford Journal of International Law, the South African Journal of Human Rights and the Constitutional Court Review.

• 1. Introduction; Part I. Justiciability and the First Wave: 2. The justiciability debate and the new constitution; 3. The first wave cases; 4. A 'curious divergence'; Part II. Procedure and the Second Wave: 5. The second-wave cases; 6. Evictions and education; 7. Patterns and possibilities in the second wave; Part III. Procedure's Potential: 8. The eviction model; 9. Democratic engagement; 10. Conclusion: real rights.

'Brian Ray's book is a remarkably insightful and powerfully analytical contribution to the evolving scholarship on social (socio-economic) rights adjudication. Using the lens of the South African Constitutional Court - internationally renowned as a pioneer court on social rights - Engaging with Social Rights focuses on the Court's more recent decisions, comparing and contrasting these with the better-known earlier decisions … charting how the Court has used procedural approaches and remedies to navigate the kinds of separation of powers concerns … that typically preoccupy courts in crafting their social rights adjudication doctrine and practice. Highlighting the potential of the Court's procedural focus - especially the meaningful engagement remedy - in opening up space for democratic participation in the context of acknowledged failures of electoral politics, [this book] provides a convincing and comprehensive account of the promise and pitfalls of social rights adjudication in South Africa.' Jackie Dugard, University of the Witwatersrand Law School