The Point of Socio-Economic Rights: 3 Ideas for What the Constitutional Court of South Africa Can Do About Structural Violence

A Talk by scholar-activist Jackie Dugard, Co-Founding Director of the Socio-Economic Rights Institute (SERI) and Senior Fellow of Law ¿ University of Witwatersand, South AfricaDespite having made considerable advances in terms of adjudicating socio-economic rights, the South African Constitutional Court has yet to develop a substantive account of the positive obligations socio-economic rights place on the state or, to put it more simply: what is the specific role of socio-economic rights? This avoidance has placed significant limitations on the judiciary¿s capacity to redress apartheid¿s socio-economic legacy. This talk offers three ideas that the Court could take up to avoid the consequences of its current approach, focusing specifically on the right to housing for the poor.Jackie Dugard is a human rights activist & scholar, with backgrounds in social science and law, who works on socio-economic rights, the role of courts in advancing social change, protest and social movements. She has helped to bring cases before the South African Constitutional Court that help stake out the meaning of the Constitutional right to water, to electricity, and to housing. She is a visiting senior fellow at the School of Law, University of the Witwatersrand, where she currently teaches Property Law. She is the co-founder of the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI), where she is currently a senior researcher.