Drawing Lines in the Sand: Building Economic and Social Rights Norms in the United States

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511842269.005

4 - Drawing Lines in the Sand: Building Economic and Social Rights Norms in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012

Cathy Albisa

Edited by

Shareen Hertel and

Kathryn Libal

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Cathy Albisa: Affiliation:
CUNY School of Law
Shareen Hertel: Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
Kathryn Libal: Affiliation:
University of Connecticut

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Summary

Freedom is no half-and-half affair.

INTRODUCTION

Despite identifying itself as a country that respects fundamental human rights, the United States is notorious for its opposition to universal economic and social rights. It lags behind every country with comparable levels of economic development in its recognition and protection of these rights. This is reflected in its high levels of income inequality and child poverty (Burd-Sharps, Lewis, and Martins 2008, 19, 132–49). Moreover, the positions it takes on the international stage – whether they involve questions of development, aid, or trade – are shaped and colored by the glaring absence of a cultural and political appreciation of what are often referred to as the “rights of the poor.”

The paucity of analysis and scholarship from the legal community on this issue is startling. A significant exception to this silence is Cass Sunstein's The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever(2004), which details the relationship between law, jurisprudence, politics, and social movements with regard to economic and social rights in the United States. Sunstein argues that economic and social rights, although not constitutional in the United States, should be viewed the way President Franklin D. Roosevelt hoped they would be – as “constitutive commitments.” He further explains that constitutive commitments represent basic principles that define our nation.

Type: Chapter
Information: Human Rights in the United States
Beyond Exceptionalism
, pp. 68 - 88

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511842269.005 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2011

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