Economic, social, and cultural rights case law deserves its place as a body of comparative and international law. The rapidly growing jurisprudence and the often untapped knowledge of scholars, advocates, and judges triggered this attempt to provide a systematic, scholarly, and critical treatment of the emerging trends, and their implications for philosophical debates over the justiciability and legal nature of social rights. However, as a body of law, it also deserves scrutiny, both in the legitimacy of the legal methods and its underlying promise to achieve social change.

The origins of this book lie in research that first commenced at the European University Institute and was significantly deepened during my tenure at the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) in Geneva. The Norwegian Centre of Human Rights at the University of Oslo provided a stimulating and supportive environment in which to bring this book to completion. I am grateful to the Lionel Murphy Foundation, the Government of Netherlands, and the Government of Norway, who, respectively, provided background support during each of these stages.

The authors for this volume were selected on the basis of their familiarity with relevant jurisdictions. I am particularly thankful to them for their painstaking expositions and those who peeled back new layers of unknown case law and examined to what extent it had affected poverty and discrimination. Their patience during the long process in bringing this book to fruition is much appreciated.