English

Social Rights and Social Policies:

a constitutional analysis of legal instruments

A research project at the National University of Córdoba (Argentina)

1. The project

We focus on the consistency between Argentina's Constitution and legal instruments used to carry out social policies. Since 1994, the Constitution includes a generous set of economic, social and cultural rights, which are judicially enforceable. Therefore, social policies should not be assessed only in terms of political or technical soundness. Policymakers should also make sure their policy choices are consistent with the constitutional framework, in order to prevent judicial challenges.

We select social policies launched by Argentina's Federal Government between 2007 and 2012. We identify the legal instruments involved, and we undertake a constitutional analysis based on caselaw and materials from Argentina and abroad.

2. The group

In 2012, the Grupo de Investigación en Derechos Sociales (Research Group on Social Rights) started its work. Its members now include law professors, lawyers and advanced law students. Many of them have been doing and publishing research on social rights for several years. Most members are also part of the Case Method Seminar, directed by Andrés Rossetti and Magdalena Álvarez since 2000.
Our research group is based at the Centro de Investigaciones Jurídicas y Sociales (Law and Social Sciences Research Center at the Law School), which belongs to the 400-year-old Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (National University of Córdoba). Research funding is provided by the University.

Horacio Javier Etchichury is the project's Director, and Magdalena Álvarez serves as Co-director. There are ten researchers: Matilde Ambort, Diego Burgos, Juan Martín Carballo, Cecilia Ferniot, Claudio Guiñazú, Natalia Mansilla, Carlos Alberto Martínez, Cecilia Mateos, Patricia Moreno y Andrés Rossetti. Agustina Mozzoni is research assistant.

A selection of our recent papers can be seen here.

3. Expected results

We plan to write a set of constitutional analysis of various policies on education, social security, healthcare and labor, including our proposals to make sure these policies survive constitutional review.

We plan to publish our findings and conclusions through public licenses publications, such as Creative Commons or similar.

Contact

We are very interested in establishing contact and sharing research experiences and materials with other research groups. Please write to gides.cordoba@gmail.com