Journal of Constitutional Law (Dec 2021)
The Social State Principle at Play: Constitutional Case-Law on Social Matters
Abstract
Social rights hold a distinct historic place in the Georgian constitutionalism. Chapter 13 of the 1921 Constitution of Georgia ‘socio-economic rights’ encompassed many progressive provisions such as norms on unemployment reduction, social assistance for persons with disabilities, labour rights and emphasized the necessity to guarantee these rights for national minorities. In conformity with this tradition, Article 5 of the modern Constitution declares Georgia a social state. This constitutional principle encompasses a wide array of progressive social objectives and lays the foundation for social rights under Chapter 2 of the Constitution. Despite their central role in the Georgian Constitution, the justiciability of social rights is linked with conceptual and practical difficulties. This article discusses the approach of the Constitutional Court of Georgia to social rights. With this purpose, the article reviews the case-law of the Court and concludes that it has developed bold standards in specific cases but its overall approach to social rights is restrained and cautious. In addition, the article analyses conceptual and practical issues that the Court encounters in its case-law on social rights and finds that the challenges identified by the Court pertain to the nature of social rights as well as the mandate and function of the Constitutional Court. These questions are not unique to the Georgian judicial reality and have been often raised in the theory of social rights and international practice alike. Accordingly, the article discusses these conceptual issues and offers theoretical and practical ways of overcoming them based on the practice from various jurisdictions.
