Fundamental Social Rights

Objectives

Introduction

1. The context

2. Social Rights and the Constitution

3. Methodological Questions

Chapter I

The structure of Social Rights

1.  Functions, scope and content

2. The distinction between rights to benefits, equality rights and rights of defence

3. The distinction between rights of protection, social rights and rights of organization and procedure

Chapter II

The different «status» of Social Rights

1. The different «positivation techniques» of Social Rights

2. Rights, claims and expectations

3. Social Rights and public policies

4. The need for the «concretization» of Social Rights

5. The graduability in the realization of Social Rights

6. The principles of confidence, legal security and the clause of social non-reversibility

Chapter III

The guarantee of Social Rights through binding norms

1. The concept of «norm» of Social Rights

2. The Constitution as a «framework order» and as a «fundamental order»

3. The «subjectivation» of Social Rights

4. The question of justiciability

Chapter IV

Forms of protection and limits to the intervention of the Judicial Power

1. The structural «margin of action» and the legislator

2. The «margin for epistemic action» and the binding nature of the Constitution

3. The praxis of the Constitutional Courts of Justice

4. Equality in the sharing of public burdens

5. «Equality criteria» in the face of rights to benefits

6. The use of the State Budget Law to change substantive legal regimes

Chapter V

The limits of constitutional interpretation

1. Interpretation and Social Rights

2.  Conceptual change and constitutional change

3. Multipolar relations with regard to the protection of Social Rights