The Future of Economic and Social Rights

The future of economic and social rights is unlikely to resemble its past. Neglected within the human rights movement, avoided by courts, and subsumed within a single-minded conception of development as economic growth, economic and social rights enjoyed an uncertain status in international human rights law and in the public laws of most countries. However, today, under conditions of immense poverty, insecurity, and political instability, the rights to education, health care, housing, social security, food, water, and sanitation are central components of the human rights agenda. The Future of Economic and Social Rights captures the significant transformations occurring in the theory and practice of economic and social rights, in constitutional and human rights law. Professor Katharine G. Young brings together a group of distinguished scholars from diverse disciplines to examine and advance the broad research field of economic and social rights that incorporates legal, political science, economic, philosophy and anthropology scholars.

Katharine G. Young is Associate Professor of Law at Boston College, Massachusetts. She has published widely in the fields of public law, human rights, and constitutionalism and is the author of Constituting Economic and Social Rights (2012) and editor of The Public Law of Gender (Cambridge, 2016) with Kim Rubenstein. She completed her doctorate in law at Harvard University, and was a fellow at Harvard's Justice, Welfare and Economics program.

Amartya Sen is Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, at Harvard University, Massachusetts. His books have been translated into more than thirty languages, and include On Economic Inequality (1973, 1997); Poverty and Famines (1981); Commodities and Capabilities (1985); The Standard of Living (1987); Development as Freedom (1999); The Idea of Justice (2009); An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions (jointly with Jean Drèze, 2013); and The Country of First Boys (2015). Amartya Sen's awards include Bharat Ratna (India); Commandeur de la Legion d'Honneur (France); the National Humanities Medal (USA); Ordem do Merito Cientifico (Brazil); Honorary Companion of Honour (UK); the Aztec Eagle (Mexico); the Edinburgh Medal (UK); the George Marshall Award (USA); the Eisenhower Medal (USA); and the Nobel Prize in Economics.