CEU eTD Collection (2023); Mukherjee, Gaurav: Complex Remedies in Social Rights Litigation

CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2023
Author Mukherjee, Gaurav
Title Complex Remedies in Social Rights Litigation
Summary Socioeconomic rights disputes pose a unique set of challenges for the judiciary. Claims arising from social rights are complex, polycentric, and involve parties who may not usually be before the court. They also implicate resource allocation, and questions persist about the judiciary’s institutional fit to decide these issues relative to the representative branches of government. How do judges get around these concerns, ensure their decisions are seen as legitimate, and avoid executive backlash? In an age of democratic backsliding, how can courts safeguard their institutional capital while delivering effective social rights remedies? The central way that judges get around these concerns is by using complex remedies. Complex remedies involve a range of stakeholders beyond the litigants to respond to some of these concerns – by incorporating civil society, government authorities, and other affected parties within the judicial process. These actors help frame the legal issues, suggest remedies, and oversee implementation. Remedies of this kind disrupt our traditional understanding of litigation and are undertheorized in the comparative constitutional law literature. This dissertation fills this gap by advancing normative constitutional theory through a study of judicial doctrine and identifies the kinds of complex remedies seen in India, South Africa, and Kenya, while also setting out the factors that can and should guide judicial decision-making and civil society strategy.
Supervisor Renata Uitz
Department Legal Studies PhD
Full texthttps://www.etd.ceu.edu/2023/mukherjee_gaurav.pdf

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