Book Review of Socio-Economic Rights: Adjudication under a Transformative Constitution by Sandra Liebenberg

Abstract

The South African Constitution is heralded for the broad protections it affords social and economic rights. In Socio-Economic Rights: Adjudication under a Transformative Constitution, Professor Sandra Liebenberg offers a thoughtful examination of the socioeconomic rights jurisprudence developed by South African courts since the adoption of the country’s current constitution fifteen years ago. In meticulous detail, she describes how the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court and other South African courts has evolved in the area of socioeconomic rights. At the same time, she offers an incisive critique of this jurisprudence, identifying how it has too often been shaped by a narrow and formalistic conception of rights that overlooks their social justice purposes and reinforces deeply unequal social and economic relationships. Finally, Liebenberg offers suggestions for the future development of this jurisprudence in ways that would be more consonant with the transformative purposes of the South African Constitution.Published: Book Review of Socio-Economic Rights: Adjudication under a Transformative Constitution by Sandra Liebenberg, 34 Human Rights Quarterly 579 (2012) (with Elizabeth Brundige).

African Constitutionalism: Between Power, Persuasion, and Irrelevance?

“…Whether it was Kenyan academic H.W.O. Okoth-Ogendo's (1991) questioning of "Constitutions without Constitutionalism"; Yash Ghai's insistence on popular participation in constitution making (Ghai and Galli 2006, 13-18); the inclusion of justiciable social and economic rights (Liebenberg 2010;K. Young 2012); debates over gender equality and customary law (Andrews 2012;Mnisi Weeks 2017); or concerns over the relationship between legal culture and transformative constitutionalism (Klare 1998), African constitutionalism is providing a dynamic landscape for intellectual engagement.…”