Socio-Legal Studies and Adjudication of Social Rights

From the 1960s, American legal scholarship birthed three intensely-fought and rich debates over public interest or 'civil rights' litigation. The contestation centred on questions of whether judicial review was an appropriate means to settle conflicts ove r the content of human rights, what were the precise contours of the rights and whether litigation was instrumentally effective. In the wake of the Cold War, the judicialisation of human rights has flourished across the world. Unlike the American experien ce, social rights adjudication has been a more conspicuous part of this new comparative jurisprudential fabric. But this transnational surge of human rights litigation has stirred strikingly similar debates to those that occurred, and continue, in America n scholarship. The thesis seeks to fill two gaps in the emerging literature on the adjudication of social rights by taking a broader comparative and multi-disciplinary perspective. It asks how and when is it justifiable and useful to endow domestic court s or international bodies with powers of interpretation and enforcement over these rights? The thesis is currently proceeding as planned: drafts of two chapters have been completed while the remaining chapters have been outlined together with the developm ent of emerging text. A research stay in the United States is important for facilitating more theoretical reflections on the topic and taking account of the broader scholarship and experience in the country. As indicated in my 2009 PhD application, I in tended 'to stay 6 months abroad at the University of California (Berkeley) as they have deep inter-disciplinary experience in research on social interest litigation and I would take some of their courses in their PhD on Jurisprudence and Social Policy.' T he research stay would also help build better links between the Faculties of Law at Berkeley and Oslo, which are currently excluded from the exchange agreement between the two Universities.