Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Foreword: Are Americans Human? Reflections on the Future of Progressive Politics in the United States
- 1 Paradoxes and Possibilities: Domestic Human Rights Policy in Context
- SECTION I STRUCTURING DEBATES, INSTITUTIONALIZING RIGHTS
- 2 The Yellow Sweatshirt: Human Dignity and Economic Human Rights in Advanced Industrial Democracies
- 3 The U.S. Welfare State: A Battleground for Human Rights
- 4 Drawing Lines in the Sand: Building Economic and Social Rights Norms in the United States
- 5 State and Local Commissions as Sites for Domestic Human Rights Implementation
- SECTION II CHALLENGING PUBLIC/PRIVATE DIVIDES
- SECTION III FROM THE MARGINS TO THE CENTER: MAKING HARMS VISIBLE THROUGH HUMAN RIGHTS FRAMING
- APPENDIX 1 Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- APPENDIX 2 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
- APPENDIX 3 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
- Index
- References
4 - Drawing Lines in the Sand: Building Economic and Social Rights Norms in the United States
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Foreword: Are Americans Human? Reflections on the Future of Progressive Politics in the United States
- 1 Paradoxes and Possibilities: Domestic Human Rights Policy in Context
- SECTION I STRUCTURING DEBATES, INSTITUTIONALIZING RIGHTS
- 2 The Yellow Sweatshirt: Human Dignity and Economic Human Rights in Advanced Industrial Democracies
- 3 The U.S. Welfare State: A Battleground for Human Rights
- 4 Drawing Lines in the Sand: Building Economic and Social Rights Norms in the United States
- 5 State and Local Commissions as Sites for Domestic Human Rights Implementation
- SECTION II CHALLENGING PUBLIC/PRIVATE DIVIDES
- SECTION III FROM THE MARGINS TO THE CENTER: MAKING HARMS VISIBLE THROUGH HUMAN RIGHTS FRAMING
- APPENDIX 1 Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- APPENDIX 2 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
- APPENDIX 3 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
- Index
- References
Summary
Freedom is no half-and-half affair.
INTRODUCTION
Despite identifying itself as a country that respects fundamental human rights, the United States is notorious for its opposition to universal economic and social rights. It lags behind every country with comparable levels of economic development in its recognition and protection of these rights. This is reflected in its high levels of income inequality and child poverty (Burd-Sharps, Lewis, and Martins 2008, 19, 132–49). Moreover, the positions it takes on the international stage – whether they involve questions of development, aid, or trade – are shaped and colored by the glaring absence of a cultural and political appreciation of what are often referred to as the “rights of the poor.”
The paucity of analysis and scholarship from the legal community on this issue is startling. A significant exception to this silence is Cass Sunstein's The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever(2004), which details the relationship between law, jurisprudence, politics, and social movements with regard to economic and social rights in the United States. Sunstein argues that economic and social rights, although not constitutional in the United States, should be viewed the way President Franklin D. Roosevelt hoped they would be – as “constitutive commitments.” He further explains that constitutive commitments represent basic principles that define our nation.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Human Rights in the United StatesBeyond Exceptionalism, pp. 68 - 88Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
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