A View From Northern Europe

Abstract

Abstract This chapter presents a northern European view of constitutionalism in Latin America. From the vantage point of the Nordic welfare states, a striking feature of Latin American constitutional law and constitutionalism is the visibility and potency of constitutional rights and courts in the field of welfare and social policy. Throughout the region, the there is a widespread social rights constitutionalism, understood as the ‘increasing inclusion of social and economic rights language in constitutions, the increasing use of that language by social actors to pursue their goals, and the increasing judicialization of political disputes under the social rights rubric’. While this is not a uniquely Latin American phenomenon, this is the region where social rights were first constitutionalized and where social rights constitutionalism is most pronounced. The trajectory and outcome is radically different from that of the Nordic welfare states, where high material social rights realization has developed in the context of low social rights constitutionalism.