THE CURIOUS CASE OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC社会经济权利.pdfVIP

THE CURIOUS CASE OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC RIGHTS Thomas P Murray IBIS working paper no. 94 THE CURIOUS CASE OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC RIGHTS (PREVENTING THE RATIONAL? SOCIO-ECONOMIC RIGHTS AND THE PHENOMENON OF BLAMING THE VICTIM, IRISH-STYLE) Thomas P Murray Working Papers in British-Irish Studies No. 94, 2009 Institute for British-Irish Studies University College Dublin IBIS Working Papers No. 94, 2009 © the author, 2009 ISSN 1649-0304 ABSTRACT THE CURIOUS CASE OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC RIGHTS (PREVENTING THE RATIONAL? SOCIO-ECONOMIC RIGHTS AND THE PHENOMENON OF BLAMING THE VICTIM, IRISH-STYLE) This paper examines the influence of political culture upon constitutional reasoning and deliberation, specifically with regard to answering the question: why have socio- economic rights not received a more effective protection in the Irish Constitution? Beyond the flotsam and jetsam of crusades and campaigns, I suggest, the politics of the Irish Constitution were and remain, intellectual, moral and ontological. What follows therefore represents a considered defence of this position, primarily with a view to demonstrating the need for a politico-sociological examination of the consti- tution’s development. Drawing on the classic account of constitutional change, namely Basil Chubb’s The Politics of the Irish Constitution (1991), I question the conventionally static depiction of the constitution’s relationship to social justice con- cerns. Subsequently, I present an alternative way of approaching this relationship provided by Steven Lukes and HLA Hart, an approach that cal