Lessons Learnt from the Implementation of Civil and Political Rights Judgments
27 Pages Posted: 6 Jul 2011
Date Written: June 6, 2011
Abstract
The enforcement of economic, social and cultural (ESC) rights judgments is often considered to present challenges that are very different from those encountered in the realm of civil and political (CP) rights. It is often assumed that there is something particular about the implementation of ESC rights that is worth investigating. Notwithstanding the well-founded claims underlying this assumption, this paper takes a step back and asks what lessons from the implementation of CP rights judgments might be generalized and fruitfully applied to the broader field of human rights implementation, including the realm of ESC rights. Its key contribution to the discussion is achieved through a shift of focus: rather than concentrating on the type of right to be implemented and presuming that the content of the right in question will determine the success or failure of its implementation, this paper looks at the process of rights implementation as such– taking into consideration institutional design criteria of different compliance regimes as well as domestic judicial and political contexts. It proposes an interactional account of compliance in which the speed and comprehensiveness of rights implementation is crucially bound up with the relationship between (supranational) human rights bodies and (national) decision makers.
Keywords: human rights, compliance, regime design
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