political agendas. A recent legislative example is France’s Loi
instituant le droit au logement opposable, which recognizes
a right to “decent and independent” housing guaranteed by
the State and enforceable by mediation and court action.
“Reading in” also occurs at the national level, either
constitutionally as in India where a right to adequate housing
has been read into the constitutional guarantees of the right
to life and mobility rights, or legislatively as in the United
Kingdom where the Human Rights Act gives domestic effect
to the European Convention.
These legal regimes- international and domestic- can and
often do intersect in two different ways. A first is in regard to
content, as international rights are often incorporated into
domestic legislation either by reference to the international
instrument or in identical or substantially similar terms to it.
A second is in regard to enforcement, as domestic courts
often have regard to international instruments either to
enforce them directly in monist jurisdictions where this is
permitted or to use them as aids in interpreting and applying
domestic rules in dualist jurisdictions where direct
enforcement is not permitted.
The enforcement of ESC rights is hotly contested and is
intertwined with the issue of recognition. Rights are often
regarded in black and white terms, as being either fully
justiciable or simply aspirational. Because economic and
social rights are justiciable with difficulty at best, they are