2.3 - Labour, Solidarity and the Social Constitution

Summary

At the point of entry let us state, as ‘prolegomena’, two fundamental premises that I assume fundamental for any theorisation of social rights constitutionalism. The first we visited in the previous chapter, and involved the formal side of constitutional reflexivity as institutional achievement: it was argued that the institutional form, as constitutional, involves constitutive assumptions about entrenchment, hierarchisation and rationalisation. A commitment is constitutionally entrenched when it can only be modified through political decisions as mandated through constitutional amendment procedures; hierarchy elevates constitutional provisions above ordinary institutional activity of the legal regulation of economic and social life; and rationalisation means that norms make sense in the light of constitutional values.