Litigating Socio-Economic Rights in Times of Resource Constraints. Lessons Learnt from the Eurozone Sovereign Debt Crisis

During the last decades, the idea that economic and social rights are judicially enforceable has gained traction thanks to the creation of dedicated treaty regimes and related international supervisory mechanisms, alongside the growing body of national case-law adjudicating these rights. However, vindicating socio-economic rights in judicial settings remains a tricky matter on a practical level, as shown by the case-law on austerity legislation adopted in the context of the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis. Against this backdrop, this book considers the 2008-2018 turmoil as a polyhedral case-study to assess whether the national, international, and European Union systems provided adequate remedies for the violation of socio-economic rights and whether these systems could have adopted a different adjudicative approach with the view of enhancing the effectiveness of socio-economic rights enshrined in international human rights law. This book also strives to offer insights on the significance of these outcomes vis-à-vis prospective violations of socio-economic rights in times of resource constraints, including as a consequence of the enactment of austerity-like policies in the near future.