Social and economic rights in the Constitution of the United States

Abstract

The article starts by discussing the most common explanations for a substantial silence of the US constitutional culture on social and economic rights. It then suggests that the most plausible explanation seems to rest rather than on what it is usually referred to as the American exceptionalism, on a peculiar culture of rights spread among US legal thinkers and endorsed by Supreme Court Justices. A review of the past and more recent Supreme Court case law on social and economic rights is presented, as well as a tepid prediction of what will occur in the future.