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Welfare Rights in Canadian and German Constitutional Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Chava Schwebel

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According to liberal political theorists, such as John Locke and Adam Smith, liberty and equality are competing values. In Canadian constitutional law, the commitment to liberal individualism has pushed questions of socio-economic rights from the constitutional sphere into the political one.

Type
Research Article
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 12 , Issue 11: Special section - The Hartz IV Case and the German Sozialstaat , 01 November 2011 , pp. 1901 - 1940
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

1 Grundgesetz für Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland [Grundgesetz] [GG] [Basic Law], 23 May 1949, BGBl. I (Ger.).Google Scholar

2 Bundesverfassungsgericht [BVerfG] [Federal Constitutional Court] 9 Feb. 2010 (Hartz IV), 125 Entscheidungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichts [BVerfGE] 175 (__), 1 BvL 1/09 of 9 Feb. 2010, para. 134, 2010 (Ger.), available at http://www.bverfg.de/entscheidungen/ls20100209_1bvl000109.html (last visited 7 Nov. 2011).Google Scholar

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6 Gosselin, 4 S.C.R 429, para. 112 (Can.).Google Scholar

7 John Rawls, Political Liberalism (1993).Google Scholar

8 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, s. 15(1), Part I of the Constitution Act, 1982, being Schedule B to the Canada Act, 1982, c. 11 (U.K.).Google Scholar

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12 Id.; see also Gosselin v. Quebec (Att'y Gen.), [2002] 4 S.C.R. 429, para. 130 (Can.) (L'Heureux-Dubé, J. dissenting).Google Scholar

13 See Gosselin, 4 S.C.R. 429 (Can.) (explaining that the Court split 5-4 on the decision with L'Heureux-Dubé, Bastarache, Arbour, & LeBel, JJ., dissenting).Google Scholar

14 Law v. Canada (Minister of Emp't & Immigration), [1999] 1 S.C.R. 497, para. 7 (Can.).Google Scholar

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32 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, s. 7, Part I of the Constitution Act, 1982, being Schedule B to the Canada Act, 1982, c. 11 (U.K.).Google Scholar

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50 Law v. Canada, [1999] 1 S.C.R. 497, para. 51 (Can.).Google Scholar

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72 Ontario (Disability Support Program) v. Tranchemontagne (2010), O.A.C. 593, paras. 90–91 (Can. Ont. C.A.), may be a source of optimism. Although directly concerned with a challenge to the equality guarantees of the Human Rights Code, the court noted that:Google Scholar

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92 Kommers notes that the FCC has characterized human dignity as both “an objective and a subjective right:” Objective, because it imposes a positive obligation on the state to establish the prerequisite conditions of its realization, and subjective because it restrains the state from interfering with personal dignity and autonomy. See Donald P. Kommers, The Constitutional Jurisprudence of the Federal Republic of Germany 312 (2d ed. 1997).Google Scholar

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165 See Schneiderman, supra note 144, at 61–63 (expanding on this point).Google Scholar

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