Introduction in ‘The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Commentary, Cases and Materials’

Abstract

Economic, social and cultural rights have long been seen as the poor cousins of civil and political rights, subject to progressive realization through measures of state policy rather than judicial enforcement. This characterisation is challenged in Saul, Kinley and Mowbray’s book ‘The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Commentary, Cases and Materials’, who establish that there is now a fairly comprehensive, integrated, and sophisticated international law of economic, social and cultural rights. Many aspects of the rights embodied in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) are immediately applicable and capable of judicial supervision. The principle of progressive realization is also, in part, amenable to judicial oversight of various kinds. Saul, Kinley and Mowbray’s book responds to this by engaging empirically with how such rights have manifested in international practice. It draws on the ICESCR drafting records, considers the supervisory practice of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), and engages in comparative methodology by considering jurisprudence from other fields of international human rights law and the work of domestic and regional bodies and tribunals.

Keywords: ICESCR, economic, social and cultural rights, progressive realisation, justiciability, judicial enforcement, socio-economic rights, UN human rights treaty bodies

JEL Classification: K10, K30