Chapter 2 introduces the conceptual and theoretical frameworks, as well as the study’s methodology. In this chapter I propose and defend a conceptualization of judicial impact. Then, I develop and explain the main argument: that two elements are key to shaping impact for structural rulings, namely monitoring mechanisms and legal constituencies. Deploying monitoring mechanisms allows courts (and other participants in monitoring venues) to impose costs on the targets of the rulings and to offset information and power asymmetries. Legally empowered advocacy organizations (legal constituencies) can exercise legal follow-up and mobilize around the issue in the aftermath of the ruling. On their own, the presence of court-promoted oversight mechanisms or of legal constituencies can promote some effects. However, when combined, they can configure a collaborative oversight arena and ultimately yield higher impact results. The chapter closes explaining the research design: I introduce the eight case studies (four rulings from Argentina and four from Colombia) and the logic of the cross-case comparisons.

Chapter 7 provides an overview of the book, its main findings and refinements to the theory based on the lessons learned. It closes by presenting the study’s broader implications for normative arguments against judicial intervention on socioeconomic rights, and for theories of judicial power. This book shows that high courts can contribute to the advancement of rights, though they cannot do so alone nor can they offer silver bullets. The Colombian and Argentine highest tribunals have, at times, successfully configured important new political spaces for effective pursuit of public policy goals, in conjunction and dialogue with external actors. In doing so, they have increased their power and positioned themselves as non-negligible political forces.

Chapter 3 presents comparative case studies of two structural socioeconomic rights rulings: Argentina’s Causa Mendoza – an environmental ruling – and Colombia’s T-760 – a ruling safeguarding the right to health. In both cases, a collaborative oversight arena was created as a result of the convergence of legally empowered advocacy organizations and court-promoted monitoring mechanisms. The collaborative oversight arenas created spaces in which different participants could exercise accountability for unfulfilled commitments from the government and private agents and, more specifically, for the implementation of different aspects of the rulings. Additionally, the creation of spaces for sustained interaction around offered the chance for the diffusion of policy ideas and a rights-based framework, while giving civil society actors access to the state. The case studies also identify unintended and negative consequences from the rulings, recognizing these as integral parts of impact.

Chapter 4 presents case studies of the impact of four landmark socioeconomic rights rulings. Each pair of case studies seeks to uncover the influence that one of two elements can have on judicial impact: court-promoted monitoring mechanisms and the presence of legal constituencies. The first pair of cases explores the aftermath of rulings that have dense legal constituencies but no court-promoted oversight mechanisms: First, Causa Verbitsky in Argentina, a decision in which the court safeguarded the rights of inmates in the Buenos Aires Province. Second, C-383 1999 in Colombia, a decision in which the court safeguarded the right to housing of Colombian mortgage debtors. The second paired comparison looks at two structural rulings in which monitoring mechanisms were put in place but where there were low density legal constituencies. The first case in this pair is Causa Badaro in Argentina, a decision in which the court protected the right to pension of Argentine seniors earning above 1,000 Argentine pesos. The second case is T-547 2010 in Colombia, a decision in which the court protected the right to prior consultation of the Indigenous people of the Sierra Nevada in Santa Marta.

Chapter 5 presents the last two case studies of the book; this paired comparison completes the four sets. This pair of rulings has in common a lack of court-promoted monitoring mechanisms as well as the absence of legally empowered advocacy organizations. The first case study delves into the aftermath of the Chaco v. Defensor del Pueblo ruling in Argentina, where the Argentine Supreme Court sought to safeguard the rights of the Qom Indigenous group in the Chaco Province. The second case study is of T-231 1993, a ruling handed down by the Colombian Constitutional Court seeking to protect the right to a healthy environment for the inhabitants around the Bogotá Canal, in Cúcuta.

This Introductory chapter previews the main argument. I emphasize that there are two key elements in shaping judicial impact for structural cases: the oversight mechanisms that some high courts deploy to monitor compliance with their structural rulings and the advocacy organizations that mobilize in the aftermath of these rulings. The chapter also presents the book’s three main contributions: First, a careful dissection of post-ruling politics uncovers the mechanisms that create impact. Second, through a comparative study of monitoring tools, the book contributes to our understanding of how judicial power is constructed in the Global South. Third, it shows that these courts do not necessarily displace democratic politics, or elected policymakers; instead, they can create new political spaces devoted to special problems.

Contemporary thought on human rights is rooted in significant part in the soil of natural law theory. Some natural law theorists embrace the idea of enforceable rights to a range of desirable socioeconomic outcomes. But natural law theory is best understood as grounding rights that foster these outcomes indirectly. Such rights, as I envision them, qualify as socioeconomic rights because they directly concern the socioeconomic sphere and because they further those aspects of flourishing which alternative schemes of socioeconomic rights are often intended to protect. There is, I suggest, a plausible natural law case to be made for indirectly promoting these dimensions of well-being by enforcing legal rights to bodily integrity, property, and labor, and so accepting robust limits on the use of force. In this chapter, I lay the groundwork for an exploration of that case by elaborating the variety of natural law theory in which I seek to ground my understanding of socioeconomic rights. I go on to discuss norms germane to the institutional context of socioeconomic life and to propose a set of fundamental socioeconomic rights and briefly consider the significance of these rights.

This chapter aims to analyze one aspect of the proportionality test in the case law of the Brazilian Supreme Court: its use as a tool for deciding cases involving socioeconomic rights. If these rights are one of the core elements of a transformative constitution, using the proportionality test to decide these cases raises the question of its transformative potential. We argue that there are several reasons for concluding that proportionality does not play a transformative role in Brazil. Some of these reasons are related to the general debate on the transformative potential of litigation; others are related to how the Brazilian Supreme Court uses the proportionality test, which could be summarized as follows: First, the Court has often used the proportionality test as a rhetorical device only; second, due to peculiarities of the decision-making process of the Court, proportionality has never been employed by the majority of its judges; third, in the realm of socioeconomic rights, the role of proportionality has been frequently undermined by other types of reasoning.

The word “dignity” is mentioned three times in the Indonesian Constitution, in Article 28 G(1), Article 28 H(3), and Article 34(2). While “dignity” in Article 28 G(1) is mentioned in the context of civil and political rights, both Article 28 H(3) and Article 34(2) mention “dignity” in the context of the rights of social security. In this chapter, the Indonesian Constitutional Court’s decisions on human dignity will be critically analyzed to illustrate how the Court interprets the concept of “dignity” differently in those articles. Arguably, the Indonesian Court takes the position that human dignity under individual rights should be limited but that human dignity under socioeconomic and cultural rights should be promoted.

This chapter provides an overview of the public health–inspired conceptualisation of the right to health and its correlative obligations in international and European human rights law. It demonstrates a certain engagement of international bodies with the protection of health while also arguing that a structural and conceptual bias against socioeconomic rights has posed an obstacle for the universal protection and accountability of the right to health of vulnerable people, a category to which irregular migrants belong. For instance, the analysis reveals a disjunct between regulatory obligations and high-threshold rights within the European Convention on Human Rights framework on the one hand and the targeting of comprehensive care while respecting non-discrimination in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’ typologies system on the other. The chapter concludes with a close examination of the conceptual and normative value of vulnerability in human rights theory and practice, which should also apply in relation to the implementation of an equity-based right to health.

This chapter examines Justice Manuel José Cepeda’s role as a towering justice on the Colombian Constitutional Court, arguing that he represents a particular type of impactful judge, i.e., a political-legal institution-builder. His core attributes have been a fusion of jurisprudential pragmatism and political skill, which he used over time to increase the power of the institution. These attributes focused Cepeda on issues that were otherwise undeveloped in the Court’s jurisprudence. For example, he paid close attention to the design of remedies, and perhaps his greatest contribution to the Court’s work were the monitoring mechanisms that he developed for mega-interventions dealing with internally displaced persons and health. Moreover, he constructed interventions in ways that built up political support for the Court while dampening the opposition that normally accompanies activism. His fusion of political and legal skill in protecting and increasing judicial power is seen from the standpoint of his entire career: as a young lawyer involved in designing the Court through the 1991 Constitution, as a justice on the Court itself, and as an adviser and academic after his term ended.

The proportionality test is not expressly referred to in the parlance of Bangladesh’s constitutional jurisprudence. Rather, a somewhat equivalent word, ‘reasonableness’, is used in Bangladesh. A review of cases demonstrates that when a restriction to rights imposed by law would implicate socio-economic matters, the Supreme Court of Bangladesh (SC) has shown greater readiness to defer to the legislative wisdom. So long as the statutory restriction in these areas could be arguably reasonable, the SC would not ordinarily hold it unconstitutional. However, when a restriction is imposed on civil and political rights, the SC is more willing to test the choice of the restraint. In this type of cases, if a less restraining alternative could achieve the same governmental purpose, the SC is more prepared to declare the contested provision as unconstitutional.

In this chapter, I test the deliberative partnership thesis and its competitors against the behavior of the African National Congress (ANC) and aligned justices on South Africa's Constitutional Court. These justices were instrumental in developing a doctrinal approach to the Constitution's Equality Clause, which reflected a constitutional vision associated with President Nelson Mandela and stressed reconciliation between South Africa's various cultural groups after apartheid. But when Mandela's successor, President Thabo Mbeki, oversaw the expansion of affirmative action, Mbeki risked conflict with the justices that the ANC had previously appointed. Again, however, this conflict did not materialize. Instead, many of the same justices began to elaborate new doctrinal positions pursuant to a transformational constitutionalism that stressed greater opportunities for the historic victims of apartheid. But when the ANC-aligned justices attempted to expand these egalitarian understandings to cases involving socioeconomic rights, they encountered stiff resistance from the ANC and subsequently capitulated, which is consistent with the deliberative partnership thesis.