Introduction: Social Rights and the Dignity of Equality

Abstract

Different conceptions of social rights can justify different ways of making political decisions about the use of scarce resources. Now, in contexts of endemic lack of resources, guaranteeing to all who have serious problems a social right enforceable against the government would have a substantial impact on State's finance and, in fact, would end up giving judges legal competence to decide on the destination of a considerable part of public resources. These problems become more and more pressing as the thesis of the justiciability of social rights becomes the new orthodoxy of Latin American constitutionalism. The articles that the reader will find in this issue of Discusiones discuss the most important aspects of these controversial issues of contemporary constitutionalism.