Published March 23, 2010
by iris_author
COMPARATIVE RESEARCH IN LAW
AND POLITICAL ECONOMY NETWORK and the NATHANSON CENTRE
are proud to invite Students and Faculty to attend a CLPE Lecture by:
Dr. Virginia Mantouvalou,
School of Law, University of Leicester, United Kingdom
“Social and Economic Rights in Europe”
Time:Friday, March 26, 2010, 12:40-2:00
Location:Osgoode 104
Sandwiches and Refreshments will be served.
RSVP please to Joanne Rappaport (jrappaport@osgoode.yorku.ca)
Dr Virginia Mantouvalou is Deputy Director of the Centre for European Law and Integration at the University of Leicester, UK, and currently a Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington DC. She holds a PhD and an LLM in Human Rights from the London School of Economics and an LLB from the University of Athens. Her areas of research are human rights and labour law, two areas that she examines separately, as well as looking at the interaction between the two. Her book, entitled Debating Social Rights, where she argues for social rights in a debate with Professor Conor Gearty (LSE), is due to be out in August 2010 (Hart Publishing). In 2009, Dr Mantouvalou received an award from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council to work on a project on the socio-economic implications of civil and political rights documents.
Abstract: The constitutional protection of civil and political rights is widely accepted in Europe. This paper argues that social rights, defined as rights to the satisfaction of basic needs, are constitutional essentials, as much as civil and political rights are. Drawing on examples from the Council of Europe and the European Union and focusing on courts, the paper argues that the judicial enforcement of social rights can lead social change, and advance, rather than undermine, democracy. The challenge is how best to give effect to social rights that are haunted by Cold War ideologies. The key question involves the complex balancing that courts have to employ in resource-demanding claims, an issue that is well-illustrated in labour-related disputes.
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