ivr
IVR2022
SW31
Construction of Emerging Rights. Debates for the Basis of New Constitutional Standards
CONVENOR: Jose M. Sauca
One of the main challenges facing open and inclusive societies is consolidating the level of protection and guarantee of human rights in a context threatened by political, social and economic circumstances that may hinder their development. New realities and opportunities that emerged at the beginning of the 21st century require both rights-protection instruments and their legal bases to be constantly updated. The demands and conditions for rights differ from those manifested throughout the previous two centuries. The development of modern, open and inclusive societies today requires us to further explore the legal bases and conceptual drafting of new rights or new dimensions of classic rights. In a context defined by political conflict, recessions and the resurgence of authoritarian positions that oppose the rights culture, seeking to incorporate new rights and new dimensions of rights into the constitutional instruments must be supported by theory that appropriately substantiates and conceptualises these demands. This is the only way they can enter the political agenda and determine the activity of competent institutions and public authorities to guarantee rights.
This Special Workshop essentially concerns two lines of contributions. The first one is eminently theoretical and consists of the bases and conceptualisation of these new rights and of these realisations or new dimensions of classic rights. The second one, however, concerns applied research and refers to the analysis of these concepts and their specific constitutional development in each case.
As examples of these issues can be identified the following ones: the theoretical, conceptual and normative bases of emerging rights or rights under construction; the constitutional and legislative framework for accommodating these demands and claims formulated in terms of rights; the new rights or rights under construction related to citizen participation in public affairs: rights to further political participation and rights to control public activity; the rights relating to spaces for consolidating peoples identity and dignity; the expectations of rights transformations and their protection in view of the new economic, technological, social and ecological realities; the characteristics of the citizenship concept based on these new claims made in terms of rights; how to introduce the human rights, gender and intersectionality perspective into the normative system and into public policies.