Cambridge Studies in Law and Society: Contesting Economic and Social Rights in Ireland: Constitution, State and Society, 1848-2016

This book presents a political understanding of socio-economic rights by contextualising constitution-makers' and judges' decision-making in terms of Ireland's rich history of people's struggles for justice 'from below' between 1848 and the present. Its theoretical framework incorporates critical legal studies and world-systems analysis. It performs a critical discourse analysis of constitution-making processes in 1922 and 1937 as well as subsequent property, trade union, family and welfare rights case law. It traces the marginalisation of socio-economic rights in Ireland from specific, local and institutional factors to the contested balance of core-peripheral and social relations in the world-system. The book demonstrates the endurance of ideological understandings of state constitutionalism as inherently neutral between interests. Unemployed marches, housing protestors and striking workers, however, provided important challenges and oppositional discourses. Recognising these enduring forms of power and ideology is vital if we are to assess critically the possibilities and limits of contesting socio-economic rights today.

Acknowledgements; Introduction: the politics of economic and social rights; 1. Constitutions 'from below' in Ireland: 1848-1922; 2. 'Not alone personal liberty but economic freedom': socio-economic rights in the making of the 1922 Irish Free State Constitution; 3. 'Highly dangerous'? Socio-economic rights in the making of the 1937 Irish Constitution; 4. Contesting the Irish Constitution and the world-system: 1945-2008; 5. The polarities of justice and 'legal business'; 6. Contesting property rights; 7. Contesting trade union rights; 8. Contesting family, education and welfare rights; 9. Socio-economic rights and the value-consensus state; 10. Constitution 'from below' in Ireland: 1945-2008; Conclusion: contesting economic and social rights today.