Constitutional Law and Social Welfare after the Economic Crisis

This chapter revolves around the promise and limits of social rights in Europe in a time of austerity with the aim to deepen our understanding of the impact of the economic crisis on social welfare programmes and to explore the capacity of constitutional law rights and legal values to shape or even inhibit policy developments. Presenting five national case studies, which represent the biggest European economies (the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain), the paper offers an account of recent reforms on social welfare and the attempts to resist them through litigation. In the first two sections, the background of such case studies in terms of their social welfare regimes, legal traditions in relation to social rights, and the impact of the great financial crisis on national economies are outlined. Then, in the third section, the main findings of the studies are outlined by pointing out the main trends in the domestic social welfare policies and attempts to use fundamental public law rights to challenge the content of such policy developments. The fourth section offers a brief discussion regarding whether and to what extent such case studies can be used as a foundation for theory-building about social rights.